“Reserved blank” is a key feature in traditional Chinese painting. It refers to the significant area of a painting surface which is deliberately left blank. It might denote clouds, rivers, lights, or simply voids and nothingness. In Chinese aesthetics, the void is regarded as the origin of everything and it often plays a more important role than the painted areas in the overall composition of a painting. The meaning of “reserved blank” is far beyond the reality or physical form – Not only the empty space balances and reinforces the subject matters, but it also evokes imagination and soothes the minds of the viewers, thereby extending its significance to the realm of the spiritual.

Li Sa embodies the traditional philosophical concept of “reserved blank” by leaving a significant amount of empty space on the painting surfaces. In order to express his experiences in the world he is living in, however, he detaches the traditional implication of “reserved blank” from his works. The lifestyle and living environment of people are different from the past, and Li Sa is conscious of the clashes and contradictions between the contemporary experience and the traditional values in Chinese paintings. Instead of being part of a harmonious conception, the voids in his works had become more like crevices, conveying senses of anxiety, tension and indifference that characterise the society nowadays.

Realised the traditional language alone was no longer adequate to reflect the contemporary living experience, Li Sa begins to experiment with different art media and turn to abstraction. He creates and arranges geometrical forms such as dagger-like cusps, dots and stripes that resemble the composition of the traditional withered lotus panting, and later on associates them with bicycle pedals and handlebars. These tangled, clashed or even distorted forms are deconstructed and abstracted from bicycle, the dominant medium of transportation in China, of which he thinks best represent the living condition of contemporary Chinese.

Born in Henan in 1975, Li Sa attended and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Master of Arts in 2005. His works are collected by various museums, hotels and private collectors from China, Macau, Hong Kong and abroad. He currently teaches at the Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology.

Image: © Li Sa, EC Gallery