Bao Lei was born in 1979 in Guangyuan, Sichuan province China. Upon her graduation and postgraduation from Sichuan Fine Art Institute (SFAI) She has worked at SFAI as a teacher and since 2019 Working as a Dean of the Water color Department of Art Education School at SFAI.
Her education and professional career have been firmly rooted in Sichuan. She is frequently exhibited with her Sichuan-based contemporaries, and together with them, she is recognized as one of the more important artist of Sichuan School Painting.
Throughout his almost 20-year-career as a professional artist, her exhibitions were notably held at Chongqing Xinghui Contemporary Art Museum("Leaping on Paper"), National Art Museum of China, Beijing ("Era Texture”), Salon 8 Art Space, Hamburg, Germany, Contemporary Female Artists Biennale”, Hebei Jiaxiang Anshan Art Museum, Chongqing, Today Art Museum, Beijing, “Four Artists in Düsseldorf", Stadtverwaltung Düsseldorf, Kulturamt Künstlerförderung (Düsseldorf), the 3rd Guiyang Biennale, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen and McDonald Stewart Art Centre, Canada, among others.
Bao Lei is the recipient of several awards including the Excellence Award by Xi'an The 4th National Women's Watercolor-Pastel Exhibition, Second Prize by Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition.
In Bao Lei visions, the subjects are wandering: the silhouettes, inconsistent, emptied by dint of visual and virtual consumption, but the objects are also like this. They are present but have become useless because they have been abandoned ("Waiting to be seated"). They confirm a void, a latent absence.
Each work embodies a moment of change: the moment when everything becomes nothing. Build your own emotions when time is constantly slipping away? "My memory of a certain time in the past is fading... and at the same time, when I try to remember a certain time, it doesn't come back to me in a linear, temporal order but in an assembly of significant moments that characterize this period, as if the other, more ordinary part had disappeared..."
In her latest’s works, the artist confounds her memory: the one from her own existence and the unconscious one of her gaze, which catches, non-stop, the images from a continuous flow of information, especially on the internet. Her works results from the "collage" of these fragments, raw or already altered by the unconscious play of memory. Together in the same space, they constitute a new universe.
Bao Lei was born in 1979 in Guangyuan, Sichuan province China. Upon her graduation and postgraduation from Sichuan Fine Art Institute (SFAI) She has worked at SFAI as a teacher and since 2019 Working as a Dean of the Water color Department of Art Education School at SFAI.
Her education and professional career have been firmly rooted in Sichuan. She is frequently exhibited with her Sichuan-based contemporaries, and together with them, she is recognized as one of the more important artist of Sichuan School Painting.
Throughout his almost 20-year-career as a professional artist, her exhibitions were notably held at Chongqing Xinghui Contemporary Art Museum("Leaping on Paper"), National Art Museum of China, Beijing ("Era Texture”), Salon 8 Art Space, Hamburg, Germany, Contemporary Female Artists Biennale”, Hebei Jiaxiang Anshan Art Museum, Chongqing, Today Art Museum, Beijing, “Four Artists in Düsseldorf", Stadtverwaltung Düsseldorf, Kulturamt Künstlerförderung (Düsseldorf), the 3rd Guiyang Biennale, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen and McDonald Stewart Art Centre, Canada, among others.
Bao Lei is the recipient of several awards including the Excellence Award by Xi'an The 4th National Women's Watercolor-Pastel Exhibition, Second Prize by Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition.
In Bao Lei visions, the subjects are wandering: the silhouettes, inconsistent, emptied by dint of visual and virtual consumption, but the objects are also like this. They are present but have become useless because they have been abandoned ("Waiting to be seated"). They confirm a void, a latent absence.
Each work embodies a moment of change: the moment when everything becomes nothing. Build your own emotions when time is constantly slipping away? "My memory of a certain time in the past is fading... and at the same time, when I try to remember a certain time, it doesn't come back to me in a linear, temporal order but in an assembly of significant moments that characterize this period, as if the other, more ordinary part had disappeared..."
In her latest’s works, the artist confounds her memory: the one from her own existence and the unconscious one of her gaze, which catches, non-stop, the images from a continuous flow of information, especially on the internet. Her works results from the "collage" of these fragments, raw or already altered by the unconscious play of memory. Together in the same space, they constitute a new universe.
Exhibitions and Awards
2021
“Immersion in Lights” Bao Lei Solo Exhibition, Art+ Shanghai Gallery, Shanghai
2020
“Spring Comes Round to Chongqing 2020”, Chongqing Art Gallery
“Charming Lixian: Sichuan Watercolor Yearly Exhibition”
The 2nd Exhibition of Chongqing Youth Watercolor Paintings
“Water and Color”: Contemporary Watercolor Paintings, Chengdu and Chongqing
“Centripetal and Centrifugal”: Contemporary International Art Exhibition in the Post-Epidemic Era
"Leaping on Paper" Exhibition of Works on Paper, Chongqing Xinghui Contemporary Art Museum
2019
"Chongqing Art Works Spring Festival Exhibition 2019" Chongqing Art Gallery
2019 Chongqing Women Artists and Calligraphers Exhibition
"Self-Attitude”, Chongqing
"Poetry of the Everyday" China Community Aesthetic Education Plan
2018
"Water Color Live" - The 1st Sichuan-Chongqing Watercolor Art Exhibition
"Color Overflow Gongtan": The 1st Chongqing Young Artist Watercolor and Pastel Painting Exhibition
"Chongqing Art Works Spring Festival Exhibition 2018” Chongqing Art Gallery
Leading Works Award by the 3rd National Women's Watercolor Art Exhibition
2017
"Family Feast - Talking about Mulberry" Huangjueping Invitational Exhibition of Resident Artists' Works
"College Character" The 2nd National Exhibition of Teaching Research and Creative Works of Teachers and Students of Watercolor in Higher Art Colleges, Qingdao Art Gallery
"The Context of the Times”, Chongqing Municipal Federation of Literary Art Museum
"Era Texture”: Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts Works Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing
The 6th Art Exhibition of Chongqing City
Second Prize by Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition
"Between Mountains and Waters - 2017 Invitational Exhibition of Watercolor Pastel Landscape" Chongqing Art Gallery
The 2nd National Women's Watercolor and Pastel Painting Exhibition
2016
Chongqing Traces of Heart: Contemporary Young Artists' Works on Paper Exhibition
"Art is My Oxygen”, Salon 8 Art Space, Hamburg, Germany
2015
Opening Exhibition of LP Art Space, Chongqing
The First National Women's Watercolor and Pastel Exhibition, Xi’An
Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Association 20th Anniversary Exhibition
“Stare: Contemporary Female Artists Biennale”, Hebei
2014
The 5th Chongqing Fine Arts Exhibition and the Thirteenth National Art Exhibition Chongqing Sent Works
“Make-up”, Jiaxiang Anshan Art Museum, Chongqing
"Academy Character" Watercolor Invitational Exhibition, Guangzhou, Guangdong
New Star Festival, Today Art Museum, Beijing
2013
“Infinity: Victory of Suburbia”, Chongqing
"Urban Illusion" Chongqing Young Artists Biennale Special Exhibition for Art Teachers
2012
“Tense Fourth: Daily Translation”, Chongqing
2011
"Dreams Shine on Reality: Huangjueping Art Ecology Exhibition”, Chongqing
The 2nd China Contemporary Academy Watercolor Art Exhibition, Hangzhou
2010
“Art into Life” Sichuan Fine Arts Institute Young Artists Exhibition
"A Twist of Red: Exhibition of Chongqing Women Artists, Painting and Calligraphy"
“Chin Chin: Four Artists in Düsseldorf", Düsseldorf, Germany
Artist Exchange Residency with Düsseldorf, Germany by Chongqing Organhaus
2009
The New Art Education: New Realistic Art Exhibition by SAIF Instructors and Students, Beijing
The Fourth Chongqing Fine Arts Exhibition to Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic and the 11th National Art Exhibition Chongqing Selected Works Exhibition
Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition
2008
Chengdu Nong Yuan International Art Exhibition
2007
Looking East and West - Xiao Yang and Bao Lei Oil Painting Duo Exhibition, Jinser Gallery, Chongqing
The 3rd Guiyang Biennale: "The Four Directions of Hearing and Mouth"
"Voluptuous Records: Chinese Contemporary Women Artists Exhibition”, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen
Duarte Beijing Opening Exhibition
2006
“Contemporary Painting from Chongqing", McDonald Stewart Art Centre, Canada
Bao Lei works have been collected by the important art organizations such as National Art Museum of China (Beijing), Guan Shanyue Art Museum (Shenzhen, Guangdong), Luo Zhongli Art Museum (Chongqing), Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (Canada), Stadtverwaltung Düsseldorf Kulturamt Künstlerförderung (Düsseldorf).
Bao Lei is the recipient of several awards including the Excellence Award by Xi'an The 4th National Women's Watercolor-Pastel Exhibition, Second Prize by Chongqing Women's Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition.