He insisted on "face-to-face" sketching for 28 years, and used portraits to ask "the existence of human beings".

Tong Yan Ru Nan Solo Exhibition "Face to Face", Tang Contemporary Art Centre, Beijing 798, China

On the afternoon of 22 February 2025, the solo exhibition "Face to Face" by Tong Yan Runan opened at the second space of Tang Contemporary Art Centre in Beijing 798, China. Curated by Cristiana Collu, former director of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, the exhibition systematically presents more than 100 works by Tong Yan Runan in recent years.

Over the past 28 years, Tong Yan Runan has insisted on a "face-to-face" approach to sketching, treating his models as equals, whether they are the president of a country or a homeless man on the side of the road. All the frames are fixed size (41×33cm), he abandons realistic details, blurring the characters' features with ink-like strokes to dissolve the differences in identity, and at the same time capturing the inner spirit and temperament of the object with the spirit of "butchering a cow", and conveying the model's meteorological charm through the layers of colours and movements of the brushstrokes. In Tong Yan Runan's paintings, portraits become a carrier of cultural observation, and his pictures show a natural texture like Taihu Lake stones, presenting the spirit of Chinese culture in modern language.