Contemporary Chinese painting is in a crucial state of transformation. It must confront the dilemma facing Western abstract painting while also reactivating the natural Chinese artistic spirit. After Zao Wou-ki infused Chinese landscape painting techniques into Western landscapes, the task of receiving the poetry of nature in a more profound way using new formal language will require a more fundamental inheritance and transformation of the great artistic traditions of China. Confucius said that poetry can stimulate the mind. In the same way, treating painting as a source of stimulation can awaken a more mindful view of nature. Through a return to a primal infinity, this abstracted nature will become a root direction for future Chinese painting. The art of Guan Jingjing presents the atmosphere of nature in an elegant and refined way, and thus represents the awareness and efforts of artists along this direction.

This, Guan Jingjing’s first solo exhibition, will present artworks from two series she has created between 2008 and 2013: the Untitled series and the Remnant Mountain series. In the Untitled series, the artist divides space using color fields that are rich in musical rhythm yet also highly fragmented. Using emotionalized brushstrokes to construct the painted plane, the coming of great fields of blackness infuses the properties of Chinese ink into acrylic to create a unique painted effect. The Remnant Mountain series is rendered in the tempera techniques of Western classical painting. This medium, after repeated applications and washings, leaves behind a fading shadow of ancient Chinese landscape painting in a continuation of what Dong Qichang called the southern literati painting tradition. This also brings abstraction back to nature in a more thorough manner. In this look back over the concealed conceptual history of a culture, Wang Wei’s sense of snow, the gentle warmth of the color green and the distant shadows of the heart all breathe with an enchanting infra-mince allure. Here, the long lost stimulation and lingering aroma of Chinese landscape painting return to nourish our gaze.

The art of Guan Jingjing presents us with the heart’s trajectory from abstraction to nature and the infusion of poetic qualities. It fills us with hope and wonder at the path which lies in her future.