Fantasy and personal expression combine for a unique approach, Li Yingxue reports.

A laptop with several Kumamon and Shiba Inu stickers. A pen holder dressed like a ballerina in a puffed black skirt. Paintbrushes and sketches strewn across a long desk.

This isn't just the workspace of 20-year-old Chinese artist Chen Yanran — it's a portal into her vivid, whimsical world. And now, she's brought the entire setup into a gallery.

For her China debut solo exhibition, Neon Dreamland, now showing at Beijing's newly launched Art Focus, Chen has re-created her creative sanctuary within the gallery — the very space where her art is born — as playful fantasy meets personal expression through sculpture and paint.

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Curated by actor Yuan Hong, founder of the cultural platform Art Knock, the show that runs through to July 6 also marks the official opening exhibition of the 2025 Gallery Weekend Beijing.

Drawing on the vivid palette of digital art and dreamlike logic of fantasy, Neon Dreamland opens a portal to the surreal and intimate rhythms of Chen's inner world.

"The name of the exhibition comes from my dreams, my life experiences, and the things I love," Chen explains.

The exhibition gathers nearly all of Chen's major works from the past few years and unfolds across two distinct zones.

On the first floor, visitors first encounter a detailed reconstruction of Chen's personal study table. Surrounding it are dozens of original works, forming a visual journey through Chen's creative process and imagination.

"I often think of owls when I create," she says. "In my mind, they're surrounded by clocks and gears — strange objects that bend time. Maybe it's something from my dreams, or maybe something deeper that I can't explain, but I can't let go of."

Upstairs, the exhibition shifts into a new dimension with WaarWorld: Players Series, a crossover collection of collectible sculptures and cartoon-style figures inspired by Liu Cixin's sci-fi novel The Supernova Era. With its bold visual style and futuristic narrative, the series merges science fiction and street aesthetics.

WaarWorld debuted with two appearances at ComplexCon, gaining attention from both art and pop culture circles.

"The characters in this series are all teenagers around 13 or 14," Chen says. "That's an age I just came through myself — so it's natural for me to understand and design their emotions and expressions."

Chen's visual language — detailed, strange, and often slightly grotesque — draws from the aesthetics of Japanese manga, French experimental cinema, and her emotional memory. Her work explores recurring themes: identity, embodiment, time and transformation.

"I don't want to define my style with a label," she says. "An artist's work should be fluid. It's that sense of change and movement that allows real innovation to happen."

Chen is part of a rising generation of Chinese artists redefining post-internet visual culture, blending East Asian pop aesthetics with personal mythology and speculative futures.

In 2023, she held her first solo exhibition NOWHERE at Somsoc Gallery in Tokyo. Since then, she has exhibited at the Art Market Budapest, Art Amoy, and ART021 Shanghai, before launching her own studio, Accro Studio — named after the French word for "endless". It's a fitting metaphor for an artist determined to explore without limits.

Neon Dreamland marks the second creative collaboration between Chen and curator Yuan. Their partnership began in 2023, when Yuan interviewed Chen for his cultural platform Art Knock, offering the public a rare, intimate glimpse into her artistic world.

This year, they reunite in the physical space of an exhibition, deepening their creative dialogue.

"When I first interviewed her, she wasn't even 18," recalls 43-year-old Yuan. "She reminded me of that impossibly driven kid you hear about — someone who, even at a young age, already had a clear vision for her life and understood exactly what kind of effort it would take to get there. At 17 or 18, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future."

Two years later, Yuan sees clear signs of Chen's growth — both artistically and personally.

"You can feel the maturity in her work now, and you can hear it in the way she speaks," he says. "She's become more self-assured. Her style has become refined and complete, and her inner world seems more independent."

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What impresses Yuan most is the richness and volume of work Chen has already created at such a young age.

"All of her pieces are rooted in the world she's seen, learned from, and imagined since childhood," he explains. "They reflect a private cosmos — one that this exhibition finally invites the public to experience firsthand."

Contact the writer at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn