NEWPORT BEACH, CA.- The Orange County Museum of Art presents My Generation: Young Chinese Artists. The exhibition is an extended look at the new generation of artists emerging in mainland China since 2000, the year that China opened wide its doors to international artists and that Chinese artists began to command attention in the global arena. All artists in the OCMA presentation were born after 1976—the end of the Cultural Revolution. Almost all of them are products of the One Child Policy and have grown up in a country with a high-powered market economy. They are ambitious, determined, and technically sophisticated with much to say about their homeland—positive and negative—and are able to navigate around the restrictions of censorship and cultural differences. The exhibition is on view June 27 through October 11, 2015.

“My Generation allows us to explore the role these emerging Chinese contemporary artists have in a globalized art world,” said OCMA Director and CEO Todd D. Smith. “With its breadth and scope of artists, media, and approaches to art making, the exhibition provides an unprecedented look inside one of the most fascinating developments in the art world today: Chinese art of our time. This exhibition continues OCMA's efforts to share with our audiences the art of the Pacific Rim.”

A leading arts journalist who has covered the Chinese art scene since the late 1990s and the exhibition's curator, Barbara Pollack states, “Young Chinese artists are breaking out in ways that challenge and defy the styles of an older generation of Chinese artists already known in the west," She interviewed more than 100 young artists from every region of China in preparation for this exhibition. "Despite language barriers and cultural differences, these artists work in a truly global vocabulary which will be readily understood by American audiences."

The artists in the exhibition are Birdhead, Chen Wei, Chi Peng, Double Fly Art Center, Fang Lu, Guo Hongwei, Hu Xiangqian , Hu Xiaoyuan, Huang Ran, Irrelevant Commission, Jin Shan, Liang Yuanwei, Liu Chuang, Liu Di, Lu Yang, Ma Qiusha, Qiu Xiaofei, Shi Zhiying, Song Kun, Sun Xun , Xu Zhen, Yan Xing, Zhang Ding, Zhao Zhao, and Zhou Yilun.

By now, many Americans are aware of the enormous art production coming from China, led by such renowned artists as Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo Qiang, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Huan, and many others. But this older generation of artists grew up under the relative isolation of the Cultural Revolution period, culminating in the trauma of the Tiananmen Square massacre. For many of them, the key issue in their work is the need to retain a Chinese identity while participating in a global dialogue. In contrast, this younger generation has grown up in relative freedom, coupled with the unbridled opportunities of a rapidly expanding economy. All of them, whether educated in the West or not, have been exposed to global art movements through the Internet and increasingly liberalized education at China's art academies. Their art works can be characterized as post- Chinese, free of stereotypes and icons, and liberated from an East-West dichotomy.

Nevertheless, their artworks speak volumes about China, a society that has undergone rapid industrialization and globalization in the past two decades. As such, this exhibition is a window on to this new China, with new technologies, exhibition strategies, and reinvention of traditional practices, reflecting the impact that rapid development has had on these artists' lives. In this exhibition, there are painters, video artists, installation artists, photographers, and artist collectives, addressing issues of alienation, self-definition, cynicism, and rebellion as they examine their lives and their homeland from a global perspective. Some ruminate over their roles in a society that has changed so much since their birth, but has not yet changed sufficiently for artists to give them total freedom. Others proceed exuberantly, without fear of reprisals or criticism.

My Generation: Young Chinese Artists opens a dialogue about the role of artists in China and in a globalized art world. A catalog with essays by curator Barbara Pollack (based on the past three years of research) and Li Zhenhua, a rising young Chinese curator who can speak for this generation, accompanies the exhibition. Biographies of all participating artists and a timeline of events impacting this generation in China also appear in the catalog.

The exhibition is accompanied by a free iPad app that includes in-depth interviews with many of the artists in the exhibition. For download, go to: http://apple.co/1qAFx46