Geng Jianyi and Zhang Peili, who studied at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s, serve as the pivots of "Learning..." They epitomize the zeitgeist — marked by a distinct departure from the Soviet-inspired idealized portraits of working-class people preferred by their teachers' generation, represented in the show by Jin Yide and Zheng Shengtian who went to ZAFA in the 1960s.

The exhibition follows the career trajectory of Geng, who goes from doing realistic figure studies in 1983, to producing a satirical piece by pasting scraps of public safety notices on how to board a bus on a wooden board in 1990. By 2003 he is back at his alma mater (which has since been rechristened as China Academy of Art), teaching a class in which students are asked to spend time in quiet contemplation, facing the wall.