shí and shè, the Chinese character for "pick up," "glean" and also "ten," in ancient times had an identical meaning with shè, that is, to "experience" or to "go through." An exemplary figure of this polysemy is student: during ten years of hard study, they glean and ascend through knowledge. Featuring work by students graduating from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in this year, this exhibition provides a glimpse into the conclusion they reached in their going through the intricate maze of sociocultural context, and, more interesting, into their original intentions that brought them there.
The exhibition is dominated by black-and-white. Black and white light shades in monochrome sketches and also fine-tune hues of colors. They shape forms and also convey emotions. They are the ultimate abstraction and also the purest expression of eternal vitality and inexhaustible creativity of life at beginning. As pure as white, these students on campus completely concentrated all their attention on artistic creation, and brought all their talents of high potential to express their clean, original intentions. It is just like how day and night, and sun and moon render all life on earth lively in turn and in the most primal rhythm in nature. In a world of riotous colors, as Zhuang Zi said, "To pursue beautiful colors makes eyes blind; or as Lao Zi said, "The most abstruse change is in the plainness." These students' insights may not be as deep as the sages', but they are dedicated to assigning continuable and extendable meanings to their art; for this purpose, they replace colors by white-and-black for its pure primitivity, and dominate colors of wide spectrum by the "glorious beauty in between the two polars of black and white." Step by step, they move beyond the limitations of the established conventions as well as the fixed perspective, and thereby they tap and build up their own artistic quality, and also open up more possibilities for steps further on their endless path of art.
About the exhibition
Dates: 27 Jul - 31 Aug 2014
Venue: Galerie Chenshia
Opening Hours: 9:00-18:00
Tel: 027-82805866
Add: 2nd Li huang pi Road,Wuhan, Hubei, PR China
Courtesy of the artists and Galerie Chenshia.
