By: Enya Lee

Guodong Fu considers herself a disciple of art. “Life itself has no way out. The only end of life is death. But what’s so miraculous,” Fu says, “is that all the emotional energies I cannot place anywhere in daily life can be transformed through artistic expression and creation.”

Fu’s artistic practice began with an intense yet fragile moment: at age 20, in the depths of severe depression, she suddenly rose and, without any formal training, created her first oil painting through an automatic, intuitive process. This primal beginning set the tone for her next 22 years of art-making: spontaneity, rawness, and an unstoppable inner drive to create.

This foundational approach is first captured in Cave, her book published in 2010, which systematically documents her intuitive paintings and stream-of-consciousness writings created between 2005 and 2010. In this book alone, Fu compiled hundreds of oil paintings and creative writings, demonstrating the explosive creative force that would become a hallmark of her entire career.

The Cave: A Womb of Creative Alchemy and a Publishing Breakthrough

For Fu, Cave symbolizes a womb of creativity—a psychic base camp from which her entire journey would unfold. Drawing from Jungian depth psychology, Fu views the cave as the “alchemical furnace of the soul”: a place of darkness and dissolution necessary for rebirth. In Jungian terms, it is the nigredo, or blackening stage, of inner alchemy, where precious treasures of consciousness—the gold—are excavated from the deepest shadows of the unconscious.

Beyond personal symbolism, Cave holds historical significance as the first Chinese-language publication that uses automatic painting and automatic writing as its creative methodology. Its value lies in documenting, through stream-of-consciousness writing and painting, the self-healing journey of an artist deeply afflicted by psychological struggles—a groundbreaking publishing perspective that had never before appeared in Chinese publishing history.

Photo Courtesy: Guodong Fu (Scanned pages of oil painting illustrations from Cave (2010))

Exhibitions as Explosive Acts of Influence and Cross-Cultural Dialogue

Since Cave, Fu has launched a series of groundbreaking exhibitions and projects, each showcasing hundreds to over a thousand works and bringing far-reaching impacts to both artistic discourse and broader culture:

Daily Paintings (2013): A large-scale solo exhibition at Deshan Art Space in Beijing, featuring over 600 mandala paintings and more than 140 oil paintings, marked the first time that mandala—a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practice tool—was integrated into the discourse and exhibition framework of contemporary Chinese art, pioneering deep dialogue between Eastern tradition and Western contemporary culture, and opening new interdisciplinary possibilities across art, spirituality, and psychology.

21 Grams of the Soul (2013): A group exhibition curated by her teacher Xi Mibu in Lhasa, Tibet, where Fu exhibited nearly a hundred mandala paintings. This exhibition was directly inspired and catalyzed by the profound impact of Fu’s Daily Paintings solo exhibition earlier that year, bringing mandala art back to its cultural origin in Tibet while injecting it with contemporary artistic language, further strengthening cross-cultural communication.

Summon (2024): Her MFA graduation exhibition at SMFA at Tufts University, a large-scale installation composed of over a hundred mandala drawings and a major oil painting. This exhibition showcased her original “Mandala within Mandala” curatorial language, subverting traditional frameworks to create immersive experiences that reorganize energy and transform consciousness—innovations with significant implications for contemporary exhibition design, curatorial theory, and spiritual aesthetics.

You Don’t Have to Stay Silent Anymore (2025): A public mandala art exhibition and interactive painting event series across Boston, marking a new attempt to bring mandala art into public art and daily urban life.

Across these projects, Fu has emerged as a pioneering force integrating mandala art into the contemporary art context, innovating new applications that carry profound cultural and social significance.

Photo Courtesy: Guodong Fu (Over 600 mandala paintings displayed together on a large exhibition wall at Guodong Fu’s 2013 solo exhibition “Daily Paintings” in Beijing.)

A New Paradigm: Art as Radical Service to Life

But Fu’s ambition extends far beyond her own creations. She believes that art, as a tool to serve life, must expand its influence and reach. In other words, she wants more people to benefit from the extraordinary transformative power of art.

Her way of realizing this vision is unique: by founding Gordon Rainbow Bridge Art Gallery, she provides exhibition opportunities not only to professional artists but to every ordinary person. Her methodology diverges both from typical art healing workshops—where instructors provide guidance and feedback—and from traditional commercial gallery models. Instead, her gallery focuses on two core pillars:

Encouraging and empowering ordinary people to use art as a tool for self-expression.

Utilizing her original exhibition language to display these works, making exhibition itself a radical act of storytelling, witnessing, and transformation.

For Fu, art is not something people must serve; it is something that exists to serve people. She believes that art can permeate all aspects of life like an all-encompassing spring breeze, helping humanity confront and resolve problems—and the gray areas in which those problems lie—that law, medicine, psychology, science, and ethics alone can never fully address.

“Many times,” she says, “what seems unsolvable simply requires an act of deep enough expression and listening. In that space of total presence, energy is transformed, and the problem itself becomes the answer. Art is the ultimate path of both expression and listening.”

Through her gallery and artistic practice, Guodong Fu is building a paradigm-shifting art space that redefines the relationship between art, life, and society—making art a fundamental force in awakening human potential, rediscovering individual value, and shaping new ways of being in the world.

To learn more about upcoming exhibitions and events at Gordon Rainbow Bridge Art Gallery, please visit: https://www.rainbowbridgeart.space/event-list 

For information on Gordon Rainbow Bridge branded art T-shirts, please visit: https://www.gordonrainbowbridge.com/ 

To explore more of artist Guodong Fu’s works and projects, please visit: https://www.rainbowbridgeart.space/portfolio

Disclaimer: The views and experiences shared in this article are based on publicly available information and personal perspectives provided by the subject, Guodong Fu. This content is intended for informational and artistic exploration purposes only and should not be interpreted as professional advice in the fields of mental health, medicine, or legal matters. No claims are made regarding the therapeutic effectiveness or guaranteed outcomes of artistic practices or exhibitions mentioned herein. Readers are encouraged to approach any creative or wellness practice with personal discretion and, when appropriate, consult qualified professionals.