In the 21st century, world culture has engendered a milieu of diversity. Within this pluralistic cultural state, selecting and thoughtfully organizing contemporary paintings from Guangdong, China is of important value to art history. Firstly, its significance may be understood from a historical perspective. In the first half of the 20th century, the Lingnan school of painting, centered around the city of Guangzhou and a core of artists that included Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren, led the art world of Guangdong Province and surrounding areas of southeastern China, a region often known as “Lingnan.” Without a doubt, the influence of their innovative artistic concepts and their tradition of painting theory held sway over Guangdong throughout the 20th century and remains strong today. In particular, this is manifested in the many contemporary painters who perpetuate the core reformist spirit of the Lingnan school. Secondly, from the perspective of culture, the special regional culture of Lingnan has responded to the constantly shifting stimuli of international visual culture with a global sensibility and a modern, broadminded attitude. These two perspectives became the basis for selecting the painters featured in this exhibition: Xu Qinsong, Luo Yiping and Zhuang Xiaojian have upheld the cultural spirit of Chinese landscape painting and in particular have demonstrated considerably different approaches to the pursuit of a modernized interpretation of the traditional “landscape spirit.” The works of Li Dongwei and Lin Lan exude the melancholy, languorous aura of the Lingnan region, expressed through distinctive images. With their open, innovative orientations, Jiang Yue, Huang Guowu and Chen Xinhua have embraced the conceptual art camp, sagely achieving exceptional balance between tradition and modernity, eternal themes and appealing flavor.

It is the open-armed, multifaceted quality of Guangdong culture that has given the two representative Chinese traditional arts of painting and calligraphy their own unique style and appearance here. This diversity of artistic images is the outcome of a sensitivity and refinement in regard to nature and culture. Their variety reveals the artists’ different techniques and concepts blending traditional forms with contemporary likenesses. Exploring these differences, studying the many cultural and spiritual elements that lie behind them, and searching for the traces of those consoling images from traditional culture are this exhibition’s main objectives. In his “Preface on Landscape Painting,” the Southern Dynasty art scholar Zong Bing said: “The sage possesses the reflection of the Way, and is able to relish the essence with a clear mind.” To “relish the essence” is to sense and appreciate the beauty of the deep inner magnetism, meaning and life spirit of a thing. Brush and ink are neither arcane nor unfathomable. Ideas do not lie perfectly still. This is the essence of contemporary Lingnan painting.