Tracing two decades of artistic practice, this exhibition examines how the artist has constructed a distinctive world concerned with “the human” and “spirituality,” beyond the conventional frameworks of contemporary painting. The figures in Cen Long’s work are composed, silent, and imbued with unnamed emotions; they are not characters within social narratives, but embodiments of an “idealized humanity.”

The term “Unfinished” in the exhibition title does not signify a lack or deficiency, but rather an ongoing stance of inquiry—a spiritual ideal that one continually approaches yet can never fully complete. Through twenty-five works, the exhibition reveals how, through gazing, restraint, and cross-cultural sensitivity, Cen Long has gradually forged his own pictorial language.

Within the context of contemporary art, painting is often positioned between two extremes: on one end, a contemporary paradigm centered on discourse, politics, or text; on the other, a retreat into formalism and stylistic nostalgia. Cen Long aligns himself with neither. He does not rely on linguistic or conceptual rhetoric, nor does he pursue technique as an exercise in historical revival. Instead, he deliberately withdraws from both poles, returning painting to a field concerned with human existence, sensation, and spiritual weight. Consequently, his images no longer seek mere “representation” or “expression,” but, through silence and restraint, allow the canvas to become a space that holds contemplation and inner movement. Through this act of self-displacement, he gradually opens a path of his own—a direction in painting that turns away from noise and returns to the core of being.

This “third path of painting” is not a stylistic category, but a form of spiritual modernity: using painting as a site in which to rethink the gravity of humanity and the soul. Cen Long’s works avoid dramatic gestures, yet possess a profound sense of presence—like a light emanating from within, illuminating those essences so often forgotten in everyday life.

The “unfinished ideal” does not point to the degree of completion of the works, but to the fact that Cen Long’s spiritual pursuit remains ongoing. The ideal he seeks is not a destination that can be reached, but a continual inward journey—an unnamed, undefined path that nonetheless deepens without cease. Along this path, figures, light, and spaces stripped of narrative become points of entry into the inner self, returning painting to its most fundamental question: how do we exist authentically in the world?

It is precisely within this state of “unfinishedness” that his painting reveals its deepest honesty and strength. This unfulfilled ideal has been the central driving force of his twenty years of creation—and it will continue to extend forward, toward places yet unreached.