For this February, we are pleased to share with you two featured artists, Wu Xuelian and Li Sa, both artists reside in Beijing. Insist in the traditional philosophies, both play distinctive styles with contemporary approaches on Chinese ink paintings and beyond.
"I borrow the composition of Chinese flower-and-bird paintings by Zhu Da and Xu Wei, and restructure them with the idea of abstraction and symbolism. Beneath the seemingly calm surface, I attempt to reveal the inner conflict and contradiction rather than the confluence and integration between the traditional and the modern. This juxtaposition is intended to evoke the kind of poetry in the brutal war between them.
To me, it truly does not matter that much what to paint or how to paint. What is more important is the position and attitude of an artist who asks and explores a particular question persistently throughout his/her life. Though my style changed to abstraction for the thesis project, I was still expressing the same idea, only in a different way." - Li Sa
"My painting connected closely with my life: important figures around me, moments in my life, things I have seen, they are parts of and where my life is complete. My painting is about emerging the fragments of them from my heart and memories or their images projected into my life
I spend most of the time to enjoy my life, some of them on dealing with some littlest thing, and too little time for drawing. Those littlest things easily disturbed me; it makes me extremely difficult to concentrate. Personally, I need to be alone when I draw, and isolate from the outside world other than myself. When I finally get to be peacefully sitting on my own in the studio, that feeling of freedom and joy is not something can be felt for anyone else. That is my world, my own world, my ever expanding of self-conscious and mind world. In there, I only face me and myself, against my mind and the bits and pieces of my thoughts. Every ideas that flashed against me, they become bigger and bigger (clear and clear?), and at last, it stops when there is a vision (it becomes a vision). Painting is me, is a mirror of myself, it reflects the other unknown side of my self- conscious, and also another unexplored world of me. I needed that moment to be on my own, and when I have a conversation with myself, I will be with my canvas." - Wu Xuelian
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.
Born in Hubei Province in 1978, Wu Xue Lian studied at China Central University of Nationalities and completed Bachelor degree in 1999. Later she continued to pursue further education and obtained a Master of Fine Art from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Currently, Wu resides in Beijing as a career artist and she is also a lecturer at the Beijing Information Science & Technology University. Her works have been exhibited in numerous cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Nantong, Paris, Wuhan, Macao and Hong Kong.
-EC Gallery
Image: © Wu Xuelian
Courtesy of the artist and EC Gallery
