By/Cui Can Spring is mighty. It is fierce and cruel. It thrives and continues to rage, without stopping for anything or anyone. Aqin knows it. She believes her drawing is too slow to catch up with the pace of time. The flowers and fruits are withering as she paints. Her process is to outline what quickly fades first, leaving the enduring therafter, and finally painting the stems and leaf blades. And so, the flowers, branches, and leaves in one painting are drawn at different times, forming a sycnchronic presentation of duration evolution. Still lives of the 17th century also possesses this quality. For instance, the painter would combine flowers from different seasons together to present vividness with observations and memories. However Aqin cannot. Follow this process as she is very restrained in using watercolors, and there has no editing through portraying the areas. Her loyalty to details and textures determines the time required. She is very honest in her paintings: each petal and each corner of the tablecloth is scrupulous with no special treatment or special favors; just like what the spring breeze does when passing through the leaves. The word “Stilleven” is created by the Dutch in the 17th century. It consists of stil (still) and leven (life), two seemingly contradictory words in Dutch that build a crucial branch of painting. The keyword in the tradition of stilleven is "time": delicate bouquets, fresh fruits, and glass or ceramic containers....
Bright and Beautiful By Dr. SHEN Qilan Enter a flower stamen, become a white cloud, and be a dumpling. Artist Liu Yi enters the world of ten thousand things with a unique perspective and brushstroke, a contemporary world of spirituality. As Paul Éluard's poem says, "There is another world, and it is in this one." There is light in all things, what Liu Yi paints is not the appearance of things, but the feeling and memory of the moment, which the glow of things is vibrating inside of us. What is amazing is Liu Yi's ability to keep himself amazed, he can always see and always be moved. He gathers and deepens the mind's attention, acutely entering the inside world of things. These works are the moments when mental feelings and visual images collide in the mind to take shape. Creation relies on the mind, not the medium of creation. What Liu Yi discovers is the mystery contained in things themselves, the lively and passionate outside world and the quiet and profound another one. The world he portrays also allows a new movement and focus of our attention, bringing the unnoticed back into focus and reopening the things we take for granted. His works offer a confidence that as we sail along with our unpredictable destiny, we are still accompanied by all bright and beautiful things. Flowers, vegetables, giant mountains, white and soft clouds, sunsets, birds ...... Both the dumplings...
For the past twenty years, the world has become my playground. My children play with the walls, the architecture, or the culture of the places where I paint them. I am constantly discovering new territories that inspire me to create new works. By wanting to speak to the people who live where I leave my mark, I force myself to understand and analyse the places I visit. By adapting myself to the walls before painting them, I want to open doors to which each of us has the key. The freedom that the canvas gives me allows me to constantly explore new ways of evoking the imagination of childhood. With the vortexes of colour into which I immerse my characters, I want to represent the richness of an inner universe that floods the space. They represent the passage to a new world, the entrance to the rabbit hole of Alice in Wonderland, fly the coop. -SETH
The Branches of Time -Photography Solo Exhibition of Fu Bailin By Xiang LiPing “Time keeps branching into countless futures.” - Jorge Luis Borges Heidegger used to say: “‘the life of man’ is a ‘dwelling for the poetic’”, “poetry first causes dwelling to be dwelling”, “But where is the space and time left for poetry in today’s dwelling?” The pursuit of fame, fortune, power, and influence fundamentally deviates from the nature of dwelling. From his perspective, what we called convenient and beautiful modern life is nothing but being alive; Sadly, we have no awareness of living in such poverty and darkness. Fortunately, we have artists. They are keenly aware of the poverty of the human spirit, the distance from the divinity, and the gloom of the world. Their creative work can bridge the rift between the poor era and the poetic dwelling. The Existence of Authenticity The living condition of Fu Bailin is like the authentic existence that Heidegger admired:“Once we choose our career, our life will be both in the present and in the future, and connected with the past at the same time. Everything is the present, and our life will blossom in this career with the surging passion of being alive...” Bailin followed his heart and nature, gave up the convenience of digital technology, returned to film photography, and explored in depth the mystery and magnificence of nature. He always treats his life and photography creation with such...
The Day is at Hand Danqing Chen It must be extra enjoyable to compose a poem to draw a picture, or draw a picture to compose a poem. I can't be a painter, or a poet who only writes, if I don't have the chance to enjoy. Although I am familiar with the joy of painting, looking at Daozi's subsequent paintings, I was infected with a strange pleasure. Is that the pleasure between poetry and painting? "Book Burning", "Sacrifice of the Sea", "Darkness at Noon", "the Blind Angel Weaving the Lightning into the looted Head"... I don't believe that he drafted these verses in advance. When he starts painting, he is no longer a poet—the entanglement and carnival of pen and paper belong to another dimension—when the painting is finished, the poet wakes up, jumps up, and intervenes, so there is "Elegy of the Righteous", "Skull of the Prophet", and "Ocean of the World", "Do not Go Gentle Into that Good Night." What does that mean? I don't guess the title of the painting, nor do I guess his painting. Even if he hides in painting because of despair, painting is still an extremely pleasant thing, and may not be equalized with emotions, thoughts, concepts, and even poetry: painting is close to a game. (Perhaps poetry is the same, but I don’t know.) Daozi is not the "amateur" painter we usually meet. Seeing his affirmation, recklessness, and changeability in his...
M Art Center is honored to hold the third solo exhibition for French photographer, Guillaume Hebert. The exhibition presents two series of works, "Updated Landscape" in 2017 and "Beyond The Ordinary" in 2019. In this period of time, Hebert's unique perspective and advanced discernment can hopefully arouse people's reflection and resonance. “Updated Landscape” - Cultural Gaze in Glimmering “Updated Landscape” is mainly about the environmental issues since Hebert’s six years residency in Asia in 2012. The imageries are from Taipei, Shanghai and other cities in China. “Beyond the Ordinary” is created by Hebert when he moved back to Europe in 2018. Facing the impact and sadness of rapid environmental change and cultural collapse, these series took a year to complete in Berlin and Paris. These two series of works created between 2017 - 2019, as the theme of the exhibition. Using the perspective of contemporary photography, “Updated Landscape” and “Beyond the Ordinary” combines the works of William Turner (1775-1851) ‘Avernue lake Aeneas and the Cumaei Sibylle’; William Marlow (1740-1813) ‘View of Matlock Bath’; and Cole Thomas (1801-1848) ‘The Course of Empire The Savage State’. Grasping painting and photography enables the audience to form a misperception at first sight. Photography is just an extension of painting. The idyllic natural landscape in the picture forms a satirical contrast with the contemporary urban landscape. The naturally integrated picture reshapes our perception and aesthetics, and poetically depicts the tragedy of ecology and culture. The...
‘Selah’ is Hebrew and appears 70 times in the recitation of the Psalm. It carries the meaning of segmentation, transposition, acoustic intensity, interlude, and extension; as intended for the theme of the exhibition. ‘Higgaion’ also conveys the idea of meditation and silence. It appears in the performance of Psalms, which represents ‘rest’. It takes a few breaks to sing to the ‘Higgaion' and in the mean time, the audience is silent and breathless; which is the deeper intention of this exhibition. In some of the works that emphasized the reproduction of past exhibitions, the intention was to reflect, pause for a moment, and slow down for the future. Henri Nouwen, the greatest priest of the 20th century, said, “Somewhere we know that without silence words lost their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.” So are people, art and exhibition.
M Art Center is proud to present the Long Chin-San Photography Exhibition we have been preparing for many years on September 7, 2019: Yuan Su (Elements). The exhibition includes dozens of works provided by Ms. Long Yuwen, the daughter of Long Chin-San. The time frame of these works spans from 1919 to 1980, and the works include original silver photography, platinum prints and limited reproductions. This is the first time ever for an art gallery of mainland China to exhibit a collection of works provided directly by the family of Long Chin-San, apart from several museum exhibitions. The curator Liu Tian took the meaning of "Yuan Heng Li Zhen" from traditional Chinese classic Book of Changesand. "Hui Shi Hou Su" from Analects of Confucius and named the exhibition Yuan Su (Elements). Through the analysis and display of Long Chin-San's creation and visual image, the exhibition will present a brand new interpretation of the elements construction in Long Chin-San's classic "Composite Picture". And it is implicitly contrasted with the Euclid’s Elements and the "element" worldview contained in modern chemistry, in response to the long-lasting ideology of "Chinese in essence, Western in practice" behind the work of Long Chin-San which is still active today. Yuan Su (Elements) – Selected photographs of Long Chin-San "Yuan Heng Li Zhen", a term in the Book of Changes, represents four stages of life from birth to maturity; "Hui Shi Hou Su", a saying from Analects of...
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