Nan Ke Gallery is delighted to announce the official representation of artist Tong Mo. Through painting, Tong Mo revisits images preserved by time. Drawing from historical photographs, family archives, and personal memories of growth, he explores how images carry the emotional experiences of an era, and how the past—despite never being personally experienced—enters and shapes our collective memory.
Installation view of Evolution: Singularity, April 22, 2023 - May 27, 2023, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai © Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery
Tong Mo’s practice has consistently examined the subtle relationship between images and time. Originally existing as records of specific moments, these images gradually move away from their historical contexts through the process of painterly transformation, becoming visual experiences suspended between reality and memory. Through layers of blur, erasure, and fluid brushwork, Tong Mo allows figures, spaces, and gestures to gradually dissolve within the image, while preserving the emotional traces of a particular time.
Tong Mo
Water Game, 2025
Oil on canvas
160h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
In Tong Mo’s work, blurring does not represent the disappearance of an image, but rather a way of approaching the nature of memory itself. Memory never preserves the past in its entirety; instead, it retains certain fragments—a particular light, a gesture, or an emotion—while gradually losing the precise details of time and place. It is through this sense of familiarity and distance that Tong Mo’s paintings evoke experiences that belong both to individuals and to a generation.
Installation view of That's How We Grow Up, Aug.24, 2026 - Sept.24, 2024, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai © Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery
As an artist born in the 1990s, Tong Mo’s practice responds to the generational experiences shaped by China’s rapid social transformation: how a shared childhood world can be preserved, and how it continues to exist through images and painting. From the historical images inherited from previous generations to fragments of his own childhood memories, Tong Mo continually searches for moments that are disappearing yet remain embedded within the body and emotional consciousness.
Tong Mo
Green 8-Bamboo, 2026
Oil on canvas
89h x 108w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
In recent years, Tong Mo’s practice has gradually shifted from looking back at historical imagery toward a more personal exploration of lived experience. His recent works turn toward everyday moments from his own process of growing up: a childhood game, a gathering, or a familiar way of life that is slowly fading away. These seemingly ordinary fragments, through the passage of time, become emotional connections between individual experience and broader historical contexts. Through painting, Tong Mo seeks to capture what cannot be fully preserved by images—the warmth of memory, the distance between people, and the quiet echoes left behind by an era.
Tong Mo
Cootie Catcher, 2025
Oil on canvas
90h x 120w cm
© Courtesy of the artist
Tong Mo’s practice continues the ongoing exploration within contemporary painting of the relationships between photography, memory, and modes of seeing. Rather than attempting to reconstruct the past, he seeks new ways of looking within the continuous flow and disappearance of images. The photographs that once belonged to particular families and specific moments in history are given renewed presence within his paintings, becoming visual reflections on time, identity, and shared experience.