The Up-Youth exhibition at Times Museum

The past few days have seen a number of exhibitions in Beijing showing the work of young artists. Differing from other group exhibitions, the ongoing Up-Youth China Youth Artists Exhibition 2014 at the Times Museum offers three distinctive perspectives for visitors to view these works and get a glimpse into young creators' minds.

Displaying more than 200 works from 45 young artists and curated by three curators under three different themes - "From the Manic Ego to the Wise Superego," "Different Meanings! Different Ways" and "Freeze! Flee" - the exhibition attempts to show the diversity and future possibilities of art by today's young artists.

For the first part of the exhibition, "From the Manic Ego to the Wise Superego," the curator has urged young artists to express their own views despite China's complicated social environment.

"When technique fails to tackle a situation, a scream perhaps can draw more attention. This is where the theme 'Manic Ego' comes from," curator Liu Libin mentions in his introduction.

The second section "Different Meanings! Different Ways" tries to show the different ways that the artists involved in the exhibition use to express their thoughts through art.

In addition to commonly-seen themes such as the disconnection of time and space, the artists in "Different meanings! Different Ways" attempt to express the complicated narrative of youth art today by expressing the living experiences and senses of individual people by using multiple styles and forms.

While the views expressed in the first two parts of the exhibition can be said to be a bit moderate, the third part embodies a more critical stance towards the relationship between artists and the current social environment.

In "Freeze! Flee," curator Lu Mingjun explained that this was his attempt to encourage and praise artists' efforts to challenge themselves and the norms established in systems such as language or society by creating works that ensure that art will never become standardized in the future.

The exhibition is scheduled to run until August 10.