Subtle Ink

Sep. 22, 2012-Oct. 21, 2012

---

Li Jin, Li Huayi

 

Text/ Lucien Y. Tso

“Subtle Ink – An Associated Exhibition of Contemporary Ink Painting by Li Jin and Li Huayi” is the first exhibition at Gallery 100 which the attention is paid for contemporary ink-brush works. Since Han (202 BC – 220 AD) and Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD), the art of Chinese brush painting has carried on the response from the intellectuality to the historical orthodoxy and the projection to inner cultivation as well as been responsible for the social moral defense under the Confucian philosophy in the floating lines in depiction of human figures or natural scenes. After Sung (960-1279 AD), Yuan (1271-1368 AD) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD), the development of literati painting reached maturity, in which the delight of Zen as being there presented in the composition is such great expression of personality and sentiment cultivation rather than reality. It is then commonly regarded as a sophisticated art among social elites. Nevertheless, the complex relation of literati painting with literature, history, philosophy and politics makes it difficult to become an independent category to be updated with times. In this exhibition, Li Jin and Li Huayi and their different painterly languages would show the two artists’ contemporary understanding on this traditional medium. Jin Li breaks away from academic techniques and randomly captures fragments in daily life in his bold depiction on figures and subject matters is between abstractive and figurative. A humorous vision to life generates a hyper-real delight absolutely close to human nature, which brings the remote and aerial literati vision in traditional ink-brush paintings back to the linguistic space of mundane reality world where appetite and lust are only natural. The molding presentation of landscape painting by Li Huayi simultaneously possesses the reforming inheritance of cracked brushstroke in North Sung Dynasty (960-1127 AD) and an understanding of lighting and space in Western visual arts. In his compositions, an aged unyielding pine tree standing on contrast to the tall erect cliff and the dense thick clouds permeate unique fantasy and subtle quality. It shows the influence of Expressionism and Deconstructionism onto the modesty of Eastern paintings. Through the two artists’ personal expression on paintings, it aims to present the meaning and value of Chinese ink with a contemporary spirit.