Guo Jian's painting The day before I went away 2008 draws upon his experiences as a youth during the Cultural Revolution and, later, as a military artist working for the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The work is part of a larger series of the same title, which is based around depictions of uniformed soldiers and female entertainers. It plays with absurd tensions - the glamorous singer and grinning soldiers are set against a looming tank, while two of the soldiers practice Qi gong, an ancient form of martial art, with one taking cruel delight in shattering the stone hanging down his colleague's back.

The heightened colour and flat surface of this painting owe much to Socialist Realism and propaganda art. Another influence is the epic movie versions of the eight 'model operas' of the Cultural Revolution, which showed proletarian characters fighting against an oppressive, traditionalist society. Filmed in lurid technicolour, these operas occupy a space between propaganda, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hollywood musical and traditional Chinese opera.