Contemporary Chinese artist Tian Longyu was born in 1981 in Shandong province and works across sculpture, installation, and painting. In 2002, he moved to Tianjin to study at the Sculpture Department of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 2007, before relocating to Beijing to pursue his career – a move that would have a profound influence as he saw the countryside of his youth transform into cityscapes like Beijing.

His Scar series (《墒》, a term for the moisture of tilled soil) is made by dragging a rake cut into the shape of a city skyline through oil paint he regards as “spiritual soil”, leaving furrows like wounds; hung beneath a single light, each relief casts a shadow whose negative form reveals the skyline that scarred it. Neither wholly painting nor sculpture, the works freeze the act of labour into matter, holding his rural origins against the “untameable monster” of urban expansion.

Tian is held in the White Rabbit Collection, Sydney; and the HOW Art Museum, Shanghai; and has exhibited at the Today Art Museum, Beijing; the 13th Havana Biennale; and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome.