Fu Qiumeng Fine Art is pleased to present the summer group show The Rain Freshens from July 29th to September 3rd, 2022, featuring the works of four new-generation ink painters who explore and reinterpret classical aesthetic paradigms and practices from both Eastern and Western tradition. The artists include Chen Duxi (b. 1983), Yau Wing Fung (b. 1990), Zhang Xiaoli (b. 1989), and Zhang Yirong (b. 1979). An opening reception will be held at 65 E. 80th Street on July 29th, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
The title of the exhibition, “The Rain Freshens,” is derived from the English translation of “空山新雨后- an empty mountain after freshly fallen rain” written by the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei 王維 (699 -751 AD) in Autumn Twilight, Dwelling Among Mountains《山居秋瞑》. This poetic scene is uncannily paralleled to the term “petrichor,” with its ancient Greek root, describing the earthy and pleasant scent that permeates the air when rain first falls on dry soil. Although Wang’s writings and the concept of petrichor originate from different cultures and contexts, both use literary synesthesia as a rhetorical device to transcend the boundaries between the visual and olfactory senses and capture the artistic form of the throb of new life in nature. Despite the perceived cultural differences, art strives to explore human life and nature. This exhibition bridges across cultures to represent a new generation of contemporary ink painters who practice and create art in a newly interconnected and globalized world.
Chen Duxi received training in both Western oil painting and traditional ink media. His neo-traditionalist works render organic forms through finely arranged lines–-which signify time and motion. Although referencing elements of landscape and figures found within the classical Chinese tradition, Chen’s works on silk do not merely seek to revive antiquity. Rather, he grounds the act of painting through an embodied relationship with nature, in hopes of articulating the subtle stability of qi and the concealed shi (momentum) that underlie the observable world. The series, entitled 持頤 (chiyi, contemplate), renders the textured rings and the fragmentations of carnelian and stone. Painted with mineral pigments, the fragmented organic form merges the scientific exactitude found in geological illustrations and the lyrical vitality of nature rendered through literati brush modes. In doing so, Chen’s phenomenological paintings take stock of life forms in motion, while placing equal emphasis on the emotional impact experienced by the viewer.
Yau Wing Fung assimilates the traditional Chinese aesthetic, which he merges with contemporary visual experiences in his works. Yau’s works reframe the idea of guan and yuan through a modern lens. Guan refers to viewers’ imagination of a space that expands outside the limited picture frame. Yuan inspires people to look beyond the visible and finite toward the boundless and infinite. His works Floating Mountain 蜃境 XI (2022) and Riding Mist 驾雾 XXI (2022) are a continuation of his ongoing interest in the structures of satellite images. As Yau reframes traditional landscape paintings within a modern technological aesthetic, viewers are encouraged to observe the individual spaces of rupture and the overall composition. In his recent work Hazy Cliff 蜃壁 II (2022), Yau used angled brushstrokes to portray the texture and shapes of stones. The painting explores the coordination of the composition and the harmony of smeared ink colors.
Zhang Xiaoli employs an interdisciplinary approach that combines classical Chinese media and subject matters with references to science and games. Klotski 华容道 II (2022) transforms the traditional Chinese sliding block puzzle game Hua Rong Dao to create a meditative experience of spiritual wandering within the game’s precise system of logic and structure. A Flame Test 光明焰 (2022) takes inspiration from ancient occult practices of alchemy and explores the connections between tradition and modernity, East and West, science and mysticism.
Zhang Yirong’s delicate ink drawings of flowers and plants evoke the purity and tranquility of nature. Steeped in Daoist and Buddhist philosophy, Zhang’s still lifes are often accompanied by inscriptions of passages from classical texts, written in elegant calligraphy by the ink painting artist Tai Xiangzhou, Zhang’s partner in life and art. In her work, ethics and aesthetics are deeply intertwined; the beauty of nature becomes the gateway to moral and spiritual developments.
