From April 17 to 22, 2001 in the China
National Art Gallery an ink painting exhibition entitled as
"Ink Essence in the Context of Contemporary Culture" was curated
by Fan Di'an, a prestigious critic and vice president of the
Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. In Fan's preface he proposes
his understanding on the status quo of Chinese contemporary
ink painting. He thinks that the contemporary Chinese ink painting
develops on the multiple dimensions by the combination of tradition
heritage, modern experience and China reality. Especially during
the 1990's Chinese ink painting changed itself differently from
the 1980's that was mainly on the traditional themes and simple
reflection of daily life. But the ink paintings and the related
artists in the 1990's are more open to ideas and experiments.
The discussion over contemporary ink painting is always controversial.
One group argues that contemporary practice is too far from
the traditional patterns of ink painting which will lose its
identity in the globalization; the another opinion defends that
only can the complete metamorphosis of ink painting itself by
giving up its insistence in the ink language and highlighting
the conceptualism become contemporary art.
Fan, as curator of the ink painting exhibition in the new century,
coins 'ink essence', which suggests the spirituality embodied
the different artists' works. He believes that contemporary
ink painting will be vigorous and optimistic as the artists
continue exploring the expression capacity of ink language on
social reality and human dasein as well as they keep on experimenting
any forms of artistic experiences, old or modern, traditional
or foreign, in order to promote Chinese traditional spiritualness
for forming the contemporary presence of 'China experience'.
At the exhibition the seminar was held and some influential
critics attended such as Yi Ying,Yin Jinan, Lang Shaojun, Chen
Lusheng, Zhu Qi and Zhou Yuejin, etc. |
