This exhibition is the fourth installment of Painting Lesson series. With visual language of painting as its starting point, it attempts to construct a theoretical model for analysis of painting language, in light of conceptual differences and practical connections of three dimensions in painting - profile, shape, and image.

For many painters, profile, shape and image form a trinity. They are different from each other and coexistent at every moment. In fact, any brush stroke embodies these three dimensions: at the same time a part of graphic profile (form), shape (modeling), and image (meaning). Each brush stroke is a Borromean Knot.

Just as self-consciousness of rhyme, meter and metaphor in literature results in poetic theories, discussions of profile-shape-image in painting could result in a visual theory, which may not only be a methodology of research, but also a methodology of creation.

In the form of small-scale group exhibition, Painting Lesson series has constituted a series of concrete perspectives for discussion of painting. After this fourth instalment, it will forsake the form of annual group exhibition, and present itself in a more flexible way.

Artists: Deng Yifu, Jian Ce,Tao Damin,Xiang Qinghua, Xu Xiaoguo,Zhang Hui

*image (left)
© Tao Damin
courtesy of the artist and Gallery Yang