Pure Views ：New Painting from China

London Louise Blouin Foundation

15 October – 4 December 2010

Opening Reception: 14 October 2010, 6.00 – 9.00 PM

Curator: Lu Peng

Artists: Cao Jingping, Fang Lijun, Gao Weigang, He Sen, Mao Xuhui, Shang Yang, Shen Na, Shen Xiaotong, Tang Ke, Wang Guangyi, Yang Mian, Yang Xun, Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaotao, Zhao Qin, Zhou Chunya, Zhang Xiaogang, Li Qing, Li Rui, Peng Si

 

The Louise Blouin Foundation (UK) and the Institutions of Chinart (CHINA) are pleased to present PURE VIEWS: NEW PAINTING FROM CHINA, a collaborative exhibition that will feature more than eighty works of art by twenty-six of the most renowned contemporary and emerging Chinese painters from 15th October – 4th December 2010 at the Louise Blouin Foundation in London. The exhibition will be marked with an opening reception on 14 October 2010.

 

I borrowed the title "Pure Views" from an artwork by Song Dynasty painter Xia Gui to suggest that Chinese contemporary art should pay more attention to Chinese traditional civilization. In the past three decades, when the use of Chinese history and traditional resources needed to be balanced, we witnessed a new phenomenon among many Chinese artists. While Western modernism inspired those born in the 1980s, and Western postmodernism inspired those born in the 1990s, there appeared artists who favored the traditional Chinese art concepts and styles. After the turn of the new millennium, we could accept this transitional period as a time marked by artists starting to master their historical resources. We gradually became aware that a new contemporary Chinese art was coming about through the combination of resources extracted from traditional art and the artists' perceptions of contemporary society.

 

——Lu Peng