Pearl Lam Galleries brings to Hong Kong for the first time a major exhibition of the work of Chinese Abstract Master: Zhu Jinshi, who participated in The Stars first ever show of contemporary art in China in 1979, and debated Abstract Expressionism with Robert Rauschenberg. Zhu Jinshi: The Reality of Paint will be curated by Paul Moorhouse, Abstract Expert and Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery London and will feature 26 new strikingly dense and abstract oil paintings.
During the Cultural Revolution, Zhu Jinshi was an active participant in underground cultural and literary activities and in the late 1970s emerging as a member of the renowned and groundbreaking ‘Stars’ (Xingxing) avant-garde artist group alongside Ai Weiwei and Ma Desheng. Working in Berlin in the 1980s and influenced by Kandinsky, Zhu began his lifelong commitment to the language of pure abstract form. His involvement with abstract expressionist painting is not simply a desire to emulate Western antecedents however, but to invest that art form with characteristics that are specific to Chinese traditions of free brush (xie yi) and ink painting. Zhu’s paintings are a visceral means of expression and whilst being embodied with preoccupations of his own culture the works take on a physical presence of their own. Moorhouse has described Zhu’s paintings as dense tapestries of interconnected experience, in this respect their thickness is essential, giving t angible form to the fleeting and ephemeral.
Highlights of the exhibition include Water Lilies, 2006, which Moorhouse has included deliberately for it importance in the stylistic and material evolution of Zhu’s work; it marks his move towards a more vibrant palette whilst hinting at his preceding work and connection to Gerhard Richter. Featured works include the enormous triptych Season of Paralyzing Strokes, 2012 which is almost 5 meters wide. The piece represents Zhu’s tribute to modern Chinese poets, including Bei Dao, with whom Zhu became close friends in Berlin after he was exiled from his homeland in the 1980s. It is a record of this formative period of time in the artist’s life as well as the artist’s expression of the deep emotion felt towards Bei Dao, particularly after hearing that his friend had fallen ill in 2012.
The series of three paintings Hard Roads in Shu, will also be on show for the first time at this exhibition. Inspired by the literary works of renowned Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (701 - 762 AD) that describe the sublimely majestic mountains and impassable valleys in Sichuan (Shu).The influence of traditional Chinese landscape genre paintings can also be seen here with large areas of blank canvas left (liu-bai), a noticeable departure from his previously covered canvases. Zhu Jinshi has said of his series “Although these painting are not able to move mountains or break stones, the exceptional power of these paintings lies in their ability to clear the mind of all worries… creative and spiritual pathways.”
Zhu describes how his works’ completion hinges on the influence of time, material and environment. “There is a distinct visual difference in the painted surface now and from when the paintings had just been completed. The passage of time bestows upon the artworks new life, as if the material itself were living and breathing.”
Image: © Zhu Jin Shi, Pearl Lam Galleries
