Cao Jun

Cao Jun (, born 1966 in Jiangyan District, Jiangsu Province, China) is a Chinese artist living in the United States. He won the Gold Medal at the Salon du Carrousel du Louvre in Paris in 2013. In 2018 he exhibited his works at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston, United States in a solo exhibition curated by the philosopher and professor Sallis John, together with the art historian Prof. Nancy Netzer. His works are a synthesis of Chinese classical calligraphy and western Modernism. Life Cao Jun was born in 1966 in Jiangyan, Jiangsu Province, China. In 1989, he completed his bachelor's degree in mining engineering at Shandong University of Science & Technology, and in the following years increasingly devoted his life to art. In 1997, he won first place at the Shandong Chinese Fine Arts exhibition, organized by the China Artists Association. In 1999 his pictures were selected by the Chinese Artists Association for the national exhibition "Flower & Bird Painting". The China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing awarded him a certificate of excellence in 2001 for his talent in calligraphy. In 2002 he emigrated to New Zealand and founded a gallery in Auckland and his own museum in Wuxi, China. Many of his expressive works have been published in art magazines, periodicals and books, and are among the collections of contemporary art in museums worldwide. such as the National Art Museum of China, the Center Pompidour, the Parliament of New Zealand and the Rangitoto College. In 2012, he received a doctorate from Nanjing University of the Arts in China. His works went around the world in 2012, cured by the International Olympic Committée. On October 24, 2014, Cao Jun's "Space of Seeking Dream" was sent to the moon in an unmanned Chang'e-5 spacecraft. The purpose of Jun's painting was to test the functions of the probe. In 2017 he collaborated with Steven Rockefeller Jr. to create the installation “breath of earth”, in which the surging waves near the Bahamas - photographed by Steven keep - laps against the majestic mountains drawn by Cao Jun. In 2018, Cao Jun exhibited his works at The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College as part of his first American retrospective, Cao Jun: Hymns to Nature. His oeuvre was presented by the philosopher and curator Prof. John Sallis and the art historian and director of the McMullen Museum of Art Prof. Nancy Netzer.