[August 5, 2012, Beijing] “Discovery-A Solo Exhibition by Lou Zhenggang” will be holding its grand opening ceremony at the Today Art Museum. The exhibition will be displayed on the second floor of the Today Art Museum’s Building No. 1 from August 5 to August 26. Showing at the exhibition will be new works from the “Harmony & Nature” and “Nature” series Lou Zhenggang has bee producing over recent years, and for which she will be specially transforming and renovating the Today Art Museum’s gallery space, putting together a “bridge” which the audience can travel across, gaining access to the opportunity to both view and personally experience the artistic worlds of Lou Zhenggang.

Beyond Discovery- viewing works of art from another angle

Video imagery, installations and mixed media have become conventional means of expression in contemporary art. As the art of water and ink painting continues onits uninterrupted path of development, crossover expressions synthesizing ink painting with artistic forms like video and installations have become more and more
common.
Lou Zhenggang as an artist is also on an unending search for new breakthroughs and transformations, in order to realize ink painting’s conversion towards the contemporary. Water is the source of life. Ink is the origin of civilization. Water and ink painting as an art form symbolizes freedom and wisdom.
For this exhibition, Lou Zhenggang has specially built a winding spiral staircase, 108 works from the “Harmony & Integration” series will be placed in light boxes set flat on the floor and, just like the title of the exhibition, viewers can follow the staircase through a discovery of the pieces below as they roam through an exploratory voyage of the world of Lou Zhenggang’s art. This embellished rendering of the color of the ink, this intersection of the real and virtual  creates an endless, multipledimensional space for her works. In this way, the relationship between the realms of the space of solid objects and the intangible space of ideas echoes the relationship between the viewer and the exhibition space, with the spectator’s attention immediately drawn to the magical and wondrous character of the spacial arrangement, absorbed by its compounding of the traditional and the contemporary.
The possibilities for expressing the tangible, threedimensional aspects of ink paintings are thereby greatly expanded, as are the modes through which we participate in their viewing.

Lou Zhenggang has constantly explored and put into practice the diversity and crossover possibilities available to contemporary art. From 1998 to 2002 she focused herself towards the creation of her first abstract work, the 34piece series entitled “Life & Love,” a collection of pieces through which Lou Zhenggang achieved a breakthrough in her use of color, smashing out of traditional Chinese painting’s conventional and structural emphasis  on black ink.
 Beginning in 2003, she began experimenting with a fuller range of materials like acrylics and started in on more abstract pieces. Through years of  repeated exploration and experimentation she produced three series of works “Harmony & Integration”, “Sun and Moon” and “Nature.” The works in these series tend to be composed in rectangular shapes, with scenes of the natural world permeating their imagery, fully aglow and alive with the  power to shock and inspire. In these three work series, Lou Zhenggang makes use of ink among the most characteristically Chinese voices in painting  to express her understanding and appreciation of “Harmony & Integration”, of the “Sun and Moon” and of “Nature,” while at the same time never  giving up on her practice and exploration of experimentation with space, with materials and even across and beyond the boundaries of the various disciplines of the arts.

Beyond Discovery- viewing works of art from another angleof the various disciplines of the arts.

Video imagery, installations and mixed media have become conventional means of expression in contemporary art. As the art of water and ink painting
 continues on its uninterrupted path of development, crossover expressions synthesizing ink painting with artistic forms like video and installations have
become more and more common. Lou Zhenggang as an artist is also on an unending search for new breakthroughs and transformations, in order to
realize ink painting’s conversion towards the contemporary. Water is the source of life. Ink is the origin of civilization. Water and ink painting as an art form symbolizes freedom and wisdom.
For this exhibition, Lou Zhenggang has specially built a winding spiral staircase, 108 works from the “Harmony & Integration” series will be placed in light
 boxes set flat on the floor and, just like the title of the exhibition, viewers can follow the staircase through a discovery of the pieces below as they roam through
an exploratory voyage of the world of Lou Zhenggang’s art. This embellished rendering of the color of the ink, this intersection of the real and virtual creates an
 endless, multipledimensional space for her works. In this way, the relationship between the realms of the space of solid objects and the intangible space of ideas
echoes the relationship between the viewer and the exhibition space, with the spectator’s attention immediately drawn to the magical and wondrous character of
 the spacial arrangement, absorbed by its compounding of the traditional and the contemporary. The possibilities for expressing the tangible, threedimensional aspects
of ink paintings are thereby greatly expanded, as are the modes through which we participate in their viewing.

Besides artistic creation, writing and charity are Lou Zhenggang’s most important pursuits

Artistic creation has been the theme song playing all throughout Lou Zhenggang’s life.addition to this, charity has become a major pursuit for her. All the way back in 1998she had already established the Zhenggang Art Education Development Fund with the Ministry of Education and founded the Zhenggang Artistic Experimental School.In 2004 she made the crossover to become a talk show host on TV Tokyo, has had columns in the Sankei Shimbun, Sosai, Gendai and other publications and has been successful and highly rated in her popularization of Chinese calligraphic culture. She has published works including Kokoro (Heart),The 70 Mottoes,Kokoro no  Kizuna (When the Heart Stumbles), The Book of the Heart (The Analects), Words Which Must be Spoken, and A Word of Warning,and her newest book Words from the Heart was released by Sanlian Store in June of 2012, its publication to be followed on August 9 with a new release event held at the Today Art Museum.