Hanart TZ Gallery presents Xu Longsen's latest solo exhibition, Mountains in the Clouds in Hong Kong. Running concurrently with Xu Longsen's groundbreaking overseas solo exhibition Light of Heaven, presented by the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago (March through June 2018), Mountains in the Clouds at Hanart TZ Gallery showcases Xu's most important works of his recent oeuvre, including the monumental installation Shanshui Totem. Comprised of massive 'landscape pillars' measuring over three metres high, Xu's artwork acts as its own intervention in the gallery space, conjuring a spiritual landscape through which one can 'leisurely wander'.
Xu Longsen's key contribution to the evolution of landscape painting is his own concept of 'monumental ink landscape painting,' which is both deeply immersed in the Chinese monumental painting tradition, and yet at the same time brings to it a completely contemporary language, representing the artist's own methodology of fusing the traditional and the contemporary. Most significant in this methodology is the way in which the artist brings about a fundamental change in the form and connotation of brushwork. His monumental landscapes conjure a breathtaking, almost overwhelming sense of vastness and grandeur, boldly drawing out a fresh and contemporary spirit from within the still-evolving heart of the landscape tradition, and simultaneously breaking out of the spatial boundaries of that tradition. In this way, Xu also creates a new kind of challenge to the confines of the exhibition hall, and a means of breaking through them. Xu Longsen is truly a pioneer, opening up new spaces and new vistas for Chinese landscape art.
Together with Shanshui Totem and a select group of Xu's monumental landscape paintings, Mountains in the Clouds also marks the Hong Kong debut of Xu's new group of semi-abstract works, Flower Series, completed just this year, in which the artist explores further experimental breakthroughs in the style, technique and language of ink painting.
About the exhibition
Dates: 25 May–7 July 2018
Venue: Hanart TZ Gallery
Courtesy of the artist and Hanart TZ Gallery, for further information please visit www.hanart.com.
