Rourke exhibit features local artist
In 1995, artist Zhimin Guan left China to pursue a career in the United States.
Ten years and more than 20 art awards later, Guan’s achievements are celebrated with his own exhibition at the Rourke Art Museum in Moorhead.
Guan, a professor at MSUM, has been teaching painting since 1985, when he taught at Dalian Institute of Industrial Design in China.
But Guan doesn’t just teach art. In 1992, his pastel painting, “Silent Violin,” won the gold medal award in Beijing’s National Pastel Art Exhibition. It also won him national acclaim.
Since then, Guan’s work has been featured in more than 90 museums and galleries around the world, including galleries in Minneapolis, New York, Washington, D.C, Philadelphia, China and Singapore.
“ My images work best when they reveal a tension between drama and reality, freedom and limitation, control and expression, attraction and repulsion, abstract and existential,” Guan said. “Through my work, viewers may discover the joyful struggle that defines my styles and identities.”
Guan, 44, maintains a local studio and lives with his wife Wei Wei and his daughter Angela in Moorhead.
The exhibition is part of the museum’s ongoing series entitled “Caution: Artists Working,” which allows viewers to observe artists as they are painting.
Beginning today and ending Nov. 10, Guan will paint every Friday in the main gallery of the museum.
Public viewing hours are 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. The exhibition ends Nov. 12.