Li Tianbing's nostalgic, multi-layered paintings unite portraiture and landscape; fiction and fantasy. Using diverse painterly techniques that fuse various genres, the artist re-considers his native China from both personal and wider socio-political viewpoints, taking portraits of children as his central theme. The notion of the native homeland is deeply embedded in Chinese culture and Li's exploration of his own past interweaves the poignancy of childhood with a landscape that exudes a sense of immanent transformation. Past and present, interior and exterior, childhood and the adult world, politics and nature - these dichotomies are interwoven in Li's works, constructing a world laden with complexity.

Li spent much of his childhood on his own, growing up in Guilin during the implementation of the one-child policy, a narrative that strongly informs his work. His paintings often depict either a single boy (himself) or groups of young boys playing in various settings, both imagined and real. The figures are largely neo-realist self-portraits - Li's own image as a boy - combined with portraits of other boys who are made present only in the painter's imagination as fictional friends or brothers.

Li's sensibility is honed through his geographical distance from China (while living in Paris) and the search for memories of his childhood. The objective and subjective aspects are fused as the artist views China from afar, piecing it together using visible fragments such as a few personal photographs, magazine and newspaper images and journeys to his hometown. The collision between the distance of time (going back to one's childhood) and the distance of place are tangibly present in the paintings. In them is a potent collision of the patriotic, the personal and the political as the real and the fictional are pieced together.

The images of children in Li's work act as a symbolic reminder of a collective social context that is present in much of modern China's art and literature since the mid-twentieth century. Despite their deeply personal aspects, as social portraits the works resonate into the wider context of the intersection between childhood, memory, and China's economic and political development. By looking back at the time of his childhood, the artist examines this environment from the perspective of his own generation, caught between the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of a new era that has in the past twenty years seen a dramatic transformation.

This historical context is very specific. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, long before the main thrust of its more recent economic miracle had begun, China underwent a fitful transformation into economic prosperity. The one-child policy was part of the drive to adequately feed the vast nation's population, after decades of economic stagnation at the hands of a totalitarian political system. In this new body of work, Li hints at an underlying sense of neglect and an absence of comfort or nurture. Yet the paint itself emphasizes a sense of retrieval and interpellation and acts as a medium (literally) between the viewer and the subject. The broader context of the didactic politics of modern China is made explicit through details in the paintings such as the political visual icons of Tiananmen and the People's Daily newspaper, ubiquitously present in the daily life of the People's Republic of China.

In Don't Touch My Dog, a group of four children is depicted playing in a partial enclosure against a background of faded, wispy trees. Each of the children is clutching a toy, but the main figure holds his above his head, as if to keep it away from the other children who all look towards him. Colour is used as a formal device to encourage uncertainty here.

A dripping patch of red near the middle of the image reveals the surface paint, drawing the viewer back out of the narrative. The fragmented nature of this painting serves to highlight a broken sense of history or memory. Toys were a new luxury in China for Li's generation, as was the idea of ownership and so the negotiation between the collective experience and the rise of individualism becomes prevalent here.

Two further paintings feature a group of four boys. In Inversed China's Daily, a group of boys set against an uncertain landscape of dense trees are seen holding copies of the People's Daily newspaper. The iconic title of the paper, famously written in Mao's hand-writing, is highlighted in the painting in bright red and presented upside down to the viewer, capturing the boys feigned interest in the news. Recruitment #1 also brings in a theme of political failure to the narrative of children's lives. Here, four boys are shown in grey tones against a backdrop of Tiananmen. Holding up papers belonging to absent men advertising that they are seeking employment, the boys become a poignant reminder of those left out of the modernisation policy. The boys appear keen but innocent, as they grapple with the fragmented text of the real world which they cannot understand yet are soon to be part of. Nature is present in the background through the wistful, wispy trees whilst the façade of Tiananmen disintegrates behind them, dripping with a sense of decay.

In Study for the Rise of China, a small boy sits at a desk in the middle of a room whose walls fade away into a snow-covered landscape. The painting is richly worked with multiple references and the central figure of the boy, though small, glows quietly in his pale yellow shirt, his expression fixed outwards towards the viewer. The title of the work is ambivalent: is the painting the study of China's rise or is it the boy himself, who sits at the desk? The opaque, all-encompassing atmosphere in this work only enhances the obfuscation of the complex issue of China's recent history. In Return with Fruitful Results, a boy, standing against a wall crammed with scrappy paper notices, carries a blackboard covered with scratchy chalk markings. In his other hand he clutches a plastic bag with the word 'Brillo' on it. The juxtaposition of the Brillo as a new cleaning product and the immediate dilapidation of the boy's surroundings is an ironic coupling. Yet the blackboard is a symbol of hope, as the old scribbles can be wiped off for new writing to begin. Both of these paintings hold references to the past and present with themes of renewal and hope emerging out of the immediate predicament of immanent change.

In two self-portraits, Li references different aspects of his life in relation to China or the past. His own journey to the West is suggested in Reverse Walk, in which a boy strides outwards towards the viewer. Pictured on a dilapidated street bearing faded signs of commer-cialism, the boy walks boldly away from the other figures seen scurrying into the distance.

There is a clear sense of independence in this picture, yet the ambivalence of the environment is evident. The commercial slogan on the wall states that 'this product works' and the red lanterns hanging outside the shops are suggestive of a poor town struggling to modernise. In Self-portrait - Incense, the faded, almost transparent image of a young child's face, a common motif in Li's earlier works, is faintly visible over a cacophony of images that is barely readable. Children's hands reach out to light their long incense sticks in a jumble of blurred figures; a scene strongly infused with red tones, which lends a sense of intensity to the image.

Bullet holes is a darker, more critical painting in which a group of young infants are depicted sitting with bowls and chopsticks. They are featured in a misty orange landscape with scattered plants and low mountains in the distance. An apparent no man's land, the surface of the painting is disrupted by pock-marks - bullet holes, both breaking and confirming the narrative.

Li's paintings occupy a specific place in Chinese art history. They explore the epic themes of belonging, patriotism and loss that have obsessed Chinese artists in classical culture, but also in the modern period. The expressions of wistfulness and bewilderment in the faces of the boys staring out at the viewer recall painters such as Zhang Xiaogang. His work has become an iconic feature of contemporary art from China, feted for its wistful portrayals of a collective, yet deeply private experience of political obedience and repression. Both of these artists employ nostalgic overtones, but whereas Zhang's figures are more impassive and aloof, Li's are full of searching. There is a sense within these works of a quest by the artist to understand himself and the context of his roots. Interwoven within this personal quest are broader issues in society, referred to obliquely through symbols of political power.

The European influence on the versatility of the medium of oil painting has been part of China's artistic legacy for more than a hundred years, starting with the merchant portraits painted by Chinese artisans for traders in the European treaty ports. In Li's works, European and Chinese influences are seamlessly fused and integrated, as is the case for much modern Chinese art in the past century. Yet, the subject matter is clearly China. The highly subjective and experiential aspect of the work brings into view the personal dimension of memory and loss. At the same time this experience is referenced within the wider context of Chinese society captured at a particular time in its recent history.

This latest series of work displays a new stage in the development of Li's practice.

Presented here is a deeper exploration of the paradoxical state of belonging and loss, childhood and responsibility. By furthering the sense of fragmentation within the pictorial frame and by bringing the material aspect of paint to the fore to heighten the sense of pictorial drama, the artist draws us into a world that highlights China's importance but also its human vulnerability.

Dr. Katie Hill