Leroy's Art Blog

In the 798 Art District, the XYZ Gallery represents excellent artists and today I had an opportunity to share a delightful lunch with its curator, Catherine  Chen.  She speaks knowledgeably about Chinese contemporary art during the 90s, when the response to the Tienenmen Massacre prevented exhibition of contemporary art.  Her view is that while some artists who had established relationships did leave for the west (primariy Paris, London and New York), most remained in China.  Even without access to museums and public galleries, they continued to share and show their work privately.  She wouldn’t agree that artists “went underground,” because that has connotations of opposition or resistance that were not part of the scene.

She had a great story about her uncle, who was a working artist during the height of the Mao years.  She said he supported himself and his family with his paintings, but he painted only pictures of Mao.  But even more than that, he painted only at night out of fear that someone might see an uncompleted painting and say that he was making a bad painting to deliberately defame the Great Leader.

Chen’s XYZ Gallery is already set up for a sculpture exhibition, Sculptures from the Holy Land, of Jonathan Darmon.  It will feature graceful polished metal figures, parts of which can be moved to change the nature of the pieces – finally, sculpture that you are encouraged to touch and interact with!  I hope Matt and I can attend the  XYZ reception for the show, coming up very soon on Sunday, the 24^th.

XYZ is also exhibiting very interesting paintings by Wang Zhidong.  They look layered and three dimensional, like a Jackson Pollock work - but they are not, they are thinly painted, with images that disappear into a blur as you move closer to the painting itself.  He certainly has a very noteworthy and unique approach to depicting the cityscape.  (And with the pollution level where it is in Beijing today, I think I know how he may have found this inspiration.)

 

 Catherine Chen and I share the spotlight with Wang Zhidong’s Memory 2, a large

Catherine also introduced me to Sunlight, an artist with her own gallery in 798, the Season Pier.  Sunlight was/is a poet who does beautiful, gentle drawings (ink washes, really) on absorbent rice paper that complements the Chinese characters of her poetry.  These delicate images contrast with the strong, passionate oil paintings that she began about two years ago, and which seem out of character with her sensitive, soft nature and appearance.

Creating the ink washes requires a  precise and a very controlled hand, as the manner in which the ink enters and spreads into the absorbent rice paper is central to the image:

Two years ago Sunlight began making oil paintings.  She finds that with this medium she can release her passion and work wildly, rapidly, repeat and re-do until the image reflects the onslaught of the brush - in essence, the antithesis of the delicate ink washes: