{"id":36378,"date":"2025-11-19T09:22:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T22:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/?post_type=product&#038;p=36378"},"modified":"2025-11-19T09:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T22:35:12","slug":"i-like-the-blue-sea","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/stock\/i-like-the-blue-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>I Like the Blue Sea<\/em>, 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Born in China in 1962\/63, Guo Jian was raised within a highly controlled political environment. He served for more than three years as a propaganda-poster painter in the People\u2019s Liberation Army and, as an arts student in Beijing, witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, where he assisted in carrying the wounded to hospital.<\/p>\n<div>\nGuo Jian\u2019s personal atlas of history continues to feed his visual commentary. His voice is satirical and erotic, challenging and confronting. He plays with irony and foreplay to expose and question the machinery of propaganda, persuasion and manipulation. Drawing upon both his lived experience and the language of mass spectacle, his work often aligns with the broader current of Chinese \u201cCynical Realism\u201d \u2013 artists responding to the collapse of ideological certainty in post-Mao China.<\/p>\n<p><i>I Like the Blue Sea<\/i> is a major painting from a pivotal period in Guo Jian\u2019s practice, created shortly after his relocation to Australia in the early 1990s and at a moment when his lexicon of soldiers, entertainers and staged militarism had fully matured. The ambitious scale of the diptych underscores its significance. The title hints at the seductive veneer of leisure and freedom \u2013 a \u201cblue sea\u201d of desire \u2013 set in tension with the rigid, performative world of military spectacle. This collision of fantasy and discipline is central to Guo Jian\u2019s critique: how both state power and popular culture deploy beauty, sexuality and spectacle to shape belief.<\/p>\n<p>The painting gains further strength through its early institutional exposure, shown at both the Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2000\u201301. Positioned alongside its companion work <i>Trigger Happy<\/i> in the National Gallery of Australia, <i>I Like the Blue Sea<\/i> stands as an important example of Guo Jian\u2019s mature, internationally recognised engagement with propaganda, memory, trauma and the negotiation of identity between China and the West.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"gmail_signature\" dir=\"ltr\" data-smartmail=\"gmail_signature\">\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PROVENANCE<\/p>\n<p>Canberra Contemporary Arts Space: Mama\u2019s Tripping, 9 September \u2013 21 October 2000<br \/>\nHeide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria: Mama\u2019s Tripping, January 2001<br \/>\nRay Hughes Gallery, Sydney: Group Show, January 2003<br \/>\nMichael Reid: Guo Jian \u2013 My China: Growing Change, July 2005<br \/>\nPrivate collection, Sydney<\/p>\n<p>COMPANION PAINTING<br \/>\nGuo Jian, Trigger Happy, 1999, oil on canvas, 180 x 200 cm, National Gallery of Australia, acquired 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":36379,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[21,35],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36378","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"location-sydney","7":"product_cat-artwork","8":"product_cat-stockroom","9":"product_shipping_class-quote-only","11":"first","12":"instock","13":"taxable","14":"shipping-taxable","15":"purchasable","16":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/36378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=36378"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=36378"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelreid.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=36378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}