Young Artist Zhong Jiawei's Works Selected for the Paris Grand Palais Art Capital Exhibition

On February 12, 2026, the highly anticipated Art Capital exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris grandly opened, with young artist Zhong Jiawei’s works selected for participation.。

Zhong Jiawei (Jiawei ZHONG)’s works have attracted widespread attention. The President of the French Independent Artists Salon at the Grand Palais visited his works in person, and French artists engaged in artistic exchanges with Zhong Jiawei.

(Photo: second from right, art educator and Xiaoyan Art Academy Director Wu Xiaoyan)

Under the gaze of French history, the 2026 Art Capital joint exhibition officially commenced at the Grand Palais in Paris. Co-hosted by the French Ministry of Culture, the French National Museums, and the Grand Palais, and with the support and invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron and Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, this annual international art extravaganza began its magnificent prelude.

Paris, the spiritual center of France and the coordinate origin of European soul and global art, occupies a pivotal position in Europe’s geography and culture. The Grand Palais Museum stands as a dazzling jewel in the crown of this city. France is not only the geographical heart of Europe but also the ultimate destination for global artistic inspiration. Within this national museum forged from stone and steel, France, with its broad cultural embrace, draws the eyes of the world here, reaffirming Paris’s enduring dominance and appeal as the capital of world art. Beneath the grand dome, the majestic space intertwines with historical echoes, and every flow of light and shadow seems to narrate the eternal story of art.

Beneath the dome woven from iron and glass, light pours down from above like poetry in motion. This edition of the exhibition brings together thousands of masterpieces from over 3,000 artists, vast in scale and comprehensive in categories: classical painting ranges from heavy traditional oil to pioneering explorations in mixed media; spatial sculpture confronts mechanics and aesthetics along the grand central axis; visual photography captures the profound dialogue between instantaneous reality and surreal imagery; works on paper, water media, engraving and etching, contemporary installations, and composite materials present a rich and multidimensional panorama of contemporary art. Whether delicate figurative realism, free-spirited abstract expressionism, or innovative boundaries of cross-media experimentation, all converge here into a grand feast of vision and thought.

For over a century, this hall symbolizing the spirit of freedom and innovation has witnessed and propelled the birth and evolution of countless art movements—Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, and more—marking pivotal chapters in art history. Today, it continues to uphold an open, independent, and inclusive stance, providing a vast stage and intellectual space for global artistic creation, serving as a key bridge connecting tradition and avant-garde, East and West.

The resonance of historical accumulation and contemporary echoes. As a national museum, the Grand Palais’s spatial grandeur bestows upon these transnational works a sacred sense of belonging. Here, artists from diverse races and cultural backgrounds engage in equal explorations of truth within the framework of history. This inclusive spirit precisely embodies France’s role as an artistic center in embracing and leading multicultural dialogue. The art event at the Grand Palais transcends mere display; it is a gathering of civilizations, a timeless aesthetic and spiritual communion.

Zhong Jiawei was born in Hong Kong in 2011 and has loved art since childhood. He began professional art training at Xiaoyan Art Academy at the age of three. He has traveled to Europe multiple times, sketching in France at age 6 and participating in the Dream China-Europe Youth Art Exploration Exhibition in Italy at age 7, visiting major European museums. He is currently studying at Yucai Shanhai School in Shenzhen.

Having received artistic nurturing and education from an early age, Zhong Jiawei’s creative themes are broad, spanning oil painting, watercolor, installation, and other art forms. At 15 years old, he is experiencing a period of artistic maturity. Passing through this exhibition as a stepping stone in his progress, his further refined works will more prominently display his unique personal style, wandering freely in the vast sea of East-West cultural fusion. His works exhibit astonishing cross-disciplinary breadth and youthful inspirational tension, demonstrating media mastery and expressive freedom far beyond his age.

Zhong Jiawei’s creations cover an extremely wide range, from the heavy texture and color narrative of traditional oil painting, to the transparent flow of watercolor and precise lines of sketching, to the conceptual construction and spatial interaction of contemporary installations—all handled with ease. This multi-category parallel practice is not superficial dabbling, but stems from his natural inner inspiration and keen capture of the intersection between Eastern and Western aesthetics, creating tension between narrative and abstraction. This diversity of media is unified by his adolescent spirit of exploration and boundless imagination, revealing clear personal imprint and internal logic.

Zhong Jiawei’s works, with their youthful vitality and broad artistic vision, become a vivid footnote in the dialogue between Eastern emerging artists and Western contemporary contexts. This is a sincere inquiry and collision of “the future has arrived,” embodied in an explosive posture.

Once again, the world clearly sees: the pulse of art beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of Paris. In the global vision and the capital of art, beneath the dome of the Grand Palais, artistic homecoming unfolds, welcoming over 200,000 visitors each year.

Editor: Hong Yan