Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Qiu Deshu (b. 1948), a pioneer of experimental ink art in the post-Mao era. In a retrospective exhibition, which will showcase eighteen of his signature ‘fissuring’ works from 1980 - 2015. The exhibition will explore the gradual transformation of his signature technique through the decades of mastery.

Qiu Deshu: The Art of Fissuring focuses on the artist’s signature technique, which he began experimenting with in the 1980s, that involves applying vivid ink and colour onto Xuan (rice) paper, tearing it up, reconfiguring the pieces, and mounting them on canvas to form images, creating lines or ‘fissures’. The process of creation, destruction and recreation conveys aspects of the artist’s experiences of an early education in traditional Chinese painting and of life through the Cultural Revolution. Qiu makes inventive use of Xuan paper’s hue, delicacy, pliability and water permeability by covering the coloured layer with a plain layer of rice paper that he rubs and carves to allow the colour to show beneath. This unique approach is similar to the technique used in scroll mounting, but while his work is indebted to Chinese landscape traditions, Qiu pushes their boundaries to create a new form of contemporary expression.

Qiu Deshu has greatly contributed to the development of Chinese art over the past 35 years. He co-founded the Grass Painting Society, one of the early movements of independent art after the death of Mao Ze Dong; he gained early international recognition for his remarkable work and has been collected by major museums including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; he was part of the seminal 80s generation who made ground breaking experimental ink art; and he developed his own artistic territory, ‘fissuring’, that transcends medium and subject to both honour his cultural heritage and simultaneously reject it.

This show is being exhibited in conjunction with a major retrospective exhibition Night and Day: The Art of Qiu Deshu, 1979 and After at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong. that explores both recent and historical works by Chinese abstract artist Qiu Deshu (b. 1948) spanning four decades of his career.

About Qiu Deshu
Qiu Deshu (b. 1948, Shanghai) received an early education in traditional Chinese painting, seal carving, and scroll mounting. His engagement with experimental ink painting began in the late 1970s. In 1979, Qiu co-founded the Grass Painting Society (Cao Cao Hua She), one of China’s first experimental art societies in the post-Mao era. The Society was a group of twelve artists who advocated independence of spirit, technique, and style in painting. In his works of this period, the influence of concepts drawn from Western modern art is evident, but Qiu’s choice of materials remained rooted in traditional Chinese art. He is one of China’s earliest professional artists in the 1980s. The artist currently lives and works in Shanghai, China.

Qiu Deshu has held numerous solo exhibitions dedicated to showcasing his fissuring technique, including Night and Day: The Art of Qiu Deshu—1979 and After (2015), currently on show at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong; Qiu Deshu, Ink Painting from 1980 to 2012 (2012), Michael Goedhuis Gallery, London, UK; Fissuring—Qiu Deshu Water-Ink Exhibition (2008), Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Qiu Deshu—Ten Years After the Grass Painting Society (2007), Shanghai Duolun Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, China; and Fissuring—The Paintings of Qiu Deshu (1994), Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China.

Major group exhibitions include Oil & Water: Reinterpreting Ink (2014), works by Qiu Deshu, Wei Jia, and Zhang Hongtu, Museum of Chinese in America, New York City, USA; Light Before Dawn:

Unofficial Chinese Art 1974–1985 (2013), Asia Society Hong Kong Center, China; Ink: The New Ink Art from China (2012), Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Taste of the East: Masterpieces of Chinese Art (2012), Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Open Flexibility: Innovative Contemporary Ink Art (2009), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; and China Without Borders (2001), Goedhuis Contemporary at Sotheby’s, New York, USA. Selected collections include the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; and Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China.