LIDA YUKO from Japan and Henri Kalama Akulez from Congo are among 42 art students from colleges around China who are currently displaying their works at the He Xiangning Art Museum in Nanshan District.

In her works on display at the exhibition, which started Sept. 10, Yuko depicts urban scenes from Japan, South Korea and China, such as restaurants, hotel rooms, markets and streets.

“What I focus on in my paintings is the Asian cultural atmosphere that has been permeated in daily urban life scenes,” she said.

“The peculiar Asian cultural images I can have found so far are humble, or even ugly and vulgar,” added Yuko, who was born in Tokyo in 1974.

Yuko has lived in Beijing for eight years. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1999 and her master’s degree from the same college this July.

“My feeling towards the Asian culture has been always going between beauty and ugliness,” she said.

“For me, the charm of the Asian culture today lies in a mixture of beauty and ugliness, which is accompanied occasionally with a touch of the sentiment of helplessness, but also contains the hope for a bright future,” she added.

Akulez, who obtained his master’s degree from the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou this July, shows an abstract style in his paintings.

“My works are essentially abstract paintings, which I prefer to describe with the term ‘cosmic quiver,’” said Akulez, 34.

“In my works, I’ve attempted to express common things people from different cultures have in the fields of perception and visual arts,” he said. “Because I strongly believe those things such as emotions and spirit, which are hard to describe with words, can be expressed with colors and forms.”

The exhibition, which will close Oct. 21, also features the works of 40 other young painters, all Chinese, who are from nine major fine arts colleges in China.

This is the fourth time He Xiangning Art Museum has invited art students to show their works in the city.

The exhibition, featuring a total of 92 works, is divided into two parts: “Perceptional Forms” and “Style and Tastes.”

“In the past three exhibitions, we focused more on social and political themes, and avoided topics such as ‘beauty,’ ‘ugliness,’ ‘tastes,’ ‘elegance’ and ‘vulgarness,’” said Liu Yingjiu, deputy director of the planning department of He Xiangning Art Museum. Liu is the chief organizer of the exhibition.

“This year’s exhibition may be regarded as our cautious attempt to show personal emotions and aesthetic pursuits young art students demonstrate in course of dramatic social changes today,” Liu said.

“Over the past two decades, we’ve seen the spread of consumerism and pop culture throughout the world as well as the most disorderly time of aesthetic tastes in Chinese history,” he said.

“Put in a participating student artist’s words, unfit dressing and improper behaviors can be seen everywhere in the works on display, which indicate the common state of anxiety people are experiencing in a time of social transition today,” he added.

Most of students participating at this year’s exhibition were born after 1980, and are part of China’s celebrated “post-1980s generation.” Because of their age, artists of this generation paint more from perception than from theoretical analysis.

Among the participants, the students from the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts stand out because of their unique regional painting style and their realistic attitudes towards art.

In his two works, Kong Fanfan, an undergraduate student of the college, depicts the Xinhai Revolution Museum and Wuhan Theater in Wuhan, which he visited last year.

Ye Dongming, a graduate student of the college, shows contemporary scenes from his hometown Yan’an, a place of historical interest in northern Shaanxi Province, in a series of paintings.

In his works, Luo Ling, a graduate student of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, depicts scenes from an industrial district around his studio in Guangzhou.

“Whenever I saw an old factory building in the district being removed, I saw a precious page of our history book torn off,” Luo said.

“I decided to use my brushes to depict this lonely, sad and shabby old industrial district and become a watchman for these old factory buildings to be removed,” he added.

The environment is a popular theme among some participants, including Liu Yang, an undergraduate student of the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, Zhou Wei of the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, and He Yun of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.

“In recent years, teachers and students in fine arts colleges across China have been playing the role of avant-garde artists in the country because of the special historical background and social situations on the Chinese mainland,” Liu said.

“So far, they’ve made a lot of achievements in their researches on painting techniques, forms and art styles,” he said.

Innovative forms and techniques can be seen in the landscape paintings by Zhou Xiaocong, an undergraduate student of the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Shao-xuan, a graduate student of the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, and Xiao Fangkai of the College of Fine Arts at Qinghua University.

In his work “The Day after Tomorrow,” Liu Ye, an undergraduate student of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, has drawn graffiti to express his concern for environmental deterioration as well as the future of humankind.

Lu Dan, a graduate student of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, has borrowed the style of commercial advertising to express his feelings in his work “Wave of Rock Music.”