The scene of “Salute to Literary Classics – Zhu Xinchang Art Exhibition” at Cheng Shifa Art Museum. (Photo courtesy of the organizer)
■Reporter Fan Xin
Where should China’s contemporary art go? It has been confused for a long time. As Chinese traditional culture continues to heat up in recent years, more and more Chinese artists are turning their attention to the fertile soil growing under their feet, gathering the “honey” of inspiration from the fragrant and fragrant traditional culture.
A number of recent art exhibitions held in major art museums in Shanghai contain vivid samples. People are delighted to see that traditional culture is activating contemporary art; when the spirit of Chinese aesthetics is integrated with contemporary aesthetic pursuits, Chinese culture continues to glow with vitality.
Find the spiritual habitat through the meaning of traditional mountains and rivers
In ancient China, people regarded natural mountains and forests as a refuge for freedom, a “retreat” beyond the world. Since then, nature has gradually become an eternal theme in Chinese art – “landscape”. The ongoing Chinese contemporary artist group exhibition “Landscape Tour” at Jiushi Art Museum and the new “Chen Zhou: Travel Pictures” exhibition at the West Bund Art Museum both focus on the ingenious transformation of traditional landscape meanings in contemporary art.
A total of 37 groups of works by 12 contemporary artists are gathered in the “Landscape Tour” exhibition. Under the guidance of new media, new techniques and new concepts, they continue to explore the ancient and eternal theme of “landscape”. These works continue the ancient literati’s yearning and appreciation of nature, and also incorporate the insights of modern society, showing the multiple possibilities of “travel” and inspiring people to rethink “art” and “reality”, “nature” and “artificial” The relationship between them starts the “spiritual journey of artistic landscape”.
For example, using ink to intervene in images, Fu Bailin brought the “Xuanlin” series of hand-dyed works. The “light room and dark room” technique gives the picture a unique grayscale and image texture, and incorporates multi-layer ink smudge and meticulous description. It draws on the brushwork of Song and Yuan landscapes, making the picture seem like a black montage. , a closer look seems to create a mysterious and profound realm. The “Water” series of mixed-material works created with lacquer, ramie and other materials originated from Wu Guanzhen’s childhood experiences and memories. The artist transfers lacquer paintings from heavy lacquer boards to light and transparent hemp substrates for expression, making good use of “light” as an invisible material in the blend of “lacquer” and “ramie”. Under different times and light sources, this series of works all present a harmonious but different, subtle and true state of observation, allowing the viewer to have a wonderful visual interaction with the works.
“Chen Zhou: Travel Pictures” is a joint curation project of the five-year exhibition cooperation between the West Bund Art Museum and the Center Pompidou. It uses several paintings and a new video work by the post-80s artist Chen Zhou to create a unified exhibition hall. The dynamic and static spiritual travel space invites the audience to explore together how the spiritual world of contemporary people should be placed.
A suspended space “Transcendence Pavilion” is specially placed in the middle of the exhibition hall, which is like a pavilion for people to take a rest in the mountains. It is surrounded by landscape paintings, which together create an interactive theater stage. Above the transcendent pavilion, the video work “The Heavy Rain Is Coming” is displayed. Through the alternation of scenes and the turning of the picture form, the protagonist’s dreams, memories or fantasies are unfolded in a subtle and discrete narrative way. Audiences can lie in the transcendental pavilion, appreciate the changing nature of day and night, and the changing scenery, and dive into a “daydream.”
Borrow the soul of Eastern stories and spread the wings of imagination
Over the five thousand years of Chinese civilization, there have been countless oriental stories that are either bizarre or full of charm. Taking these vivid stories as the starting point and spreading the wings of contemporary imagination, art will have a unique oriental background and cultural connotation. The “Homage to Literary Classics – Zhu Xinchang Art Exhibition” at the Cheng Shifa Art Museum and the large-scale solo exhibition “Oriental Stories” by Shi Zhiying at the Yuz Museum are both representative of the works.
Using contemporary Chinese paintings to “resurrect” a series of ancient Chinese literary classics such as “Journey to the West”, “The Romance of the Gods”, “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” and “The Classic of Mountains and Seas” is Zhu Xinchang, a painter at the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy and a national first-class artist, in “Returning to Literary Classics” Answer sheet handed over in the exhibition “Homage”. These paintings are not intended to explain the text through pictures, but focus on using highly modern brushwork and space construction to explore the deep artistic conception based on Chinese classical magical literature and history, and express the mythological elements and visual symbols extracted from it in a certain way. Within this internal structure, the theme is given new meaning through artistic reproduction.
Zhu Xinchang’s many magical and bizarre series of creations on display this time have their own characteristics. For example, in the series of works depicting “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”, “Jiao Na”, “Qing Feng”, “Ying Ning” and “A Bao” are particularly touching. The main images in the paintings are all women, most of whom are not bound by the ethics of the world and bravely pursue a happy life. This kind of real human feelings is cleverly blended with fantasy scenes and bizarre plots, reflecting the brilliance of human ideals.
The creations of Shi Zhiying, a young oil painter from the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Academy, in recent years have been “organized” by curator Shen Qilan into an “Oriental Story Collection” including seven stories. In the exhibition of the same name, he attempts to present the artist’s understanding of lines, colors, shapes, and weights. , exploration and understanding of statues and physical properties.
The oriental stories written by Shi Zhiying are often not graphic, but spiritual. For example, the “City Metaphor” in traditional culture is a story in the exhibition, where the artist presents his practice of the flow of consciousness. What’s interesting is that the entire exhibition also forms a city. The viewing route is designed as a square and reciprocating closed loop. There is no preset viewing order. There are scattered seats radiating outward around the circular space in the middle of the main hall. , like ripples, invites the audience to enter the story together.
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责编：杨帆 ]