The concept of 82 Republic was started in Hong Kong in October 2006 by Connoisseur Art Gallery – one of the biggest and most important art galleries in Hong Kong. Drawing from Connoisseur Art Gallery’s twenty years of experience in the art industry, 82 Republic represents a project to promote young talented artists born in the 1980s; providing them with a platform to showcase their works internationally and a channel to exchange ideas and dialogues with other artists of their generation across geographical boundaries. In a nutshell, 82 Republic aims to represent and sponsor a total of 82 artists, mainly from China but also from around the world, by the end of a ten-year period.

With a physical art space in SoHo, Central Hong Kong, 82 Republic opened to much fanfare and enthusiasm in the art industry as being the only gallery in the region dedicated to artists born in the 1980s. Its opening exhibition “Our Childhood, Our Toys, Our Dreams”, of four artists – CHAN Yu, ZHOU Siwei, LI Li and WAN Yang – depicted the childhood fantasies of these artists and provided a glimpse of the mindset of the new generation in China, who has grown up in an environment of rapid development, strong economic growth and consumerism. While different in their artistic styles and employment, these pioneer artists and other young art stars such as GUO Hongwei, LI Shurui and LIU JIa, have a lot in common. Termed “Generation Y” or sometimes called “little emperors” or the “Me Generation” in China, they were the first generation of the one-child policy in China and are thought to be influenced by several factors: individualism, consumerism, modernization, and technology. Yet their creativity and perhaps opinionated personalities, have given them the courage to experiment new things and explore new ideas.

It is this creativity and adventurous spirit that define the 82 Republic artists’ works and set them apart from those of their predecessors belonging to the “post-1989” group. The differences between their works are stark. Without the same political and social baggage as their predecessors, they move away from the usual social realism and political pop themes; defying the current trend of “new pop art” that dominates the genre of contemporary Chinese art to capture a new idea or concept and a different “spirit” or “mood”. The results are astounding – their works are fresh and original; full of wonder and intrigue.