organizer

Shenzhen Guanshanyue Art Museum

Exhibition time

June 25th to September 5th, 2025

venue

Hall D and E on the third floor of Guanshan Yue Art Museum

In the 1980s, modern Chinese design, especially graphic design, was deeply influenced by Japan. Mainland design has learned from the West and Japan, and the Japanese design trend has influenced Shenzhen through Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Thanks to the geographical advantage of connecting Hong Kong and Macao, the trend of graphic design in Shenzhen has begun to emerge.

Since its opening, the Guanshan Yue Art Museum has built an international platform for design and art exchange, introducing high-level exhibitions from numerous international designers. Through exhibitions and collections, the museum has systematically collected works from international designers such as U. G. Sato, Yoshiaki Aoba, Katsuji Asaba, Takashi Akiyama, and Matthias.

Among all design categories, graphic design started earlier. In the 1980s, Shenzhen's rapidly developing market economy system attracted a large number of designers to start businesses and develop here. Starting from the late 1980s, a group of graphic designers emerged in Shenzhen, who often possess a strong sense of subjectivity, focus on individual expression, and explore from multiple perspectives. When reflected in their design works, they exhibit avant-garde consciousness and experimental qualities. This group also led the trend of graphic design, which quickly spread in the south and affected various parts of the country.

Starting from 1998, Guan Shanyue Art Museum began to develop a collection plan for design works and gradually collected a number of representative graphic design works from the 1980s and 1990s, accumulating important literature for the historical research of Chinese graphic design.

After 2000, with the continuous development and growth of the designer community, influential and sustainable design exhibitions and competitions have been held in Shenzhen. "Design" has become a consensus as a "living culture, new tradition" growing in the soil of special zone openness and innovation.

In 2003, Guan Shanyue Art Museum held the "03 Shenzhen Design Exhibition - Design Shenzhen · Shenzhen Design", which caused a great response in the design industry nationwide. In the same year, Shenzhen proposed the development strategy of "building the city through culture", and creating a "design capital" is an important measure to achieve this strategic goal. Afterwards, Guan Shanyue Art Museum timely identified "research and exhibition of contemporary design art" as one of its new academic directions, and began to deepen its exploration in the field of design art.

After experiencing external absorption and internal introspection, after 2000, designers consciously pursued historical context, constructed ontology language, advocated personal innovation, explored spiritual connotations, and the appearance of design culture became increasingly diverse. The design language also gradually matured, and a large number of graphic designers with international influence emerged.

In 2008, Shenzhen joined the UNESCO Global Creative Cities Network and became China's first and the world's sixth "City of Design". Afterwards, Shenzhen frequently held national level design exhibitions and international exchange activities, and creative industry parks and design bases emerged. The entire city of Shenzhen formed a cultural atmosphere where the public paid attention to and participated in design.

With the continuous improvement of China's international influence, especially after the 2008 Olympic Games, the "image of China" has been spreading to various parts of the world. In the era of globalization, how to tell the story of China well, expand the influence of Chinese culture, spread contemporary Chinese values, and showcase the real, three-dimensional, and comprehensive China to the world has become an important issue facing the design industry. In the series of events such as "Home Diplomacy", graphic design has achieved fruitful results.

As a national key art museum, Guanshanyue Art Museum is an important platform for national exhibitions, displays, and promotion. Since 2012, Guan Shanyue Art Museum has served as the executing agency and participated in the organization of four consecutive "Chinese Design Exhibitions and Public Art Special Exhibitions", collecting some excellent works from previous Chinese design exhibitions.

In recent years, our museum has actively collaborated with academic forces from domestic design colleges and universities, striving to find new breakthroughs in the study of design art. As a result, we have launched the "Salute to Design" series of academic projects and held seven case study exhibitions, namely Zhang Ding, Zhang Guangyu, Pang Xunquan, Zhou Lingzhao, Chen Zhifo, Chen Hanmin, and Lei Guiyuan.

The implementation of the above brand exhibitions has caused a significant response in the academic community, which is of great significance for expanding the academic research of Guan Shanyue Art Museum in contemporary Chinese design and enriching the academic connotation of Shenzhen as a design capital.