In search of the eternal in every face

Tong Yanrunan has placed the portrait at the center of his art, a genre that opens to a profound reflection on the image. But the theme of his investigation is not the resemblance to the subject. His gaze searches for the eternal that is in every face.
The artist frees himself of all unnecessary details to try to capture the essence of a presence, the moment. His paintings, made in a rapid and resolute way, have nothing to do with academic tradition but are imbued with a spiritual dimension.
Tong abandons any reference to the identity of the individual and to personal history: instead he tries to capture in a face the fragments of a collective memory that refers to the universal.