Gaojie Chen’s (b. 1993) practice explores the boundary between reality and imagination through fantastical imagery, surreal visual elements, and personal memory. Drawing from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Dunhuang manuscripts, Tibetan Thangka painting, and the visual languages of Bosch and Bruegel, he constructs intricate pictorial worlds where mythology, memory, and everyday experience coexist.

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His paintings often present absurd and uncanny scenes populated by hybrid beings, symbolic fragments, and dreamlike narratives. Through daily observation, reading, image collection, and free association, Chen transforms uncertainty, mysticism, and lived experience into complex visual ecosystems. For him, painting is an ongoing inquiry into the hidden connections between reality, imagination, and the collective unconscious.​