Tina Keng Gallery presents Towards Atmospheric Abstraction: Jiang Dahai and Yan Shanchun Joint Exhibition, curated by Chia Chi Jason Wang. Jiang Dahai and Yan Shanchun draw from their own cultural roots that reflect the specificity of their own subjectivity while embedding modern Western painting skills when creating. In the process of realizing their creativity, they do not avoid confronting tradition, but embrace the transformation of tradition in order to find new possibilities of form in the confluence of tradition and the present era.

The two invited artists Jiang Dahai (born 1946) and Yan Shanchun (born 1957) differ in their age as well as academic and creative backgrounds; their forms of expression and techniques are therefore equally dissimilar. However, the aesthetics they express and pursue through their paintings have a shared purpose, each revisiting the tradition of Chinese landscape paintings. In transforming the aesthetics of nature into a personal abstract artistic language, they have both added modern techniques that not only blend into the overall aesthetics of traditional Chinese landscape painting, but give a visceral familiarity. Hence, despite their abstract styles, they provide a visual association of familiarity.

Jiang Dahai spent over two decades in France beginning in 1986. His works—with clouds created through an abstract stippling technique as the theme—give the illusion of blurred and vaporous mists. Jiang’s colorful stippling effect that has an added interest of irregularity and random chance. In reality, his work does not reflect the contemporary human experience, but for those familiar with Chinese traditional landscape paintings, the scenes and atmospheres he expresses have a historical nostalgia that recalls the landscape paintings of the Five Dynasties and Northern and Southern Song periods. Jiang Dahai was born in Nanjing and graduated from China Central Academy Of Fine Arts with a master degree in oil painting in 1986. He held several solo exhibitions in art museums in China and his works have been shown in some international exhibitions, including Giving and Receiving—A Collaborative Exhibition of Contemporary Artists from China and the United States in 2011 in Colorado, USA and Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition in 2008 in Germany.

Yan Shanchun was born and raised in Hangzhou and he received his training from the China Academy of Art, located by Xihu (West Lake). The lake is his birthplace and place of residence, as well as the location for his emotional life and memory. West Lake is a consistent theme and subject of his work. The West Lake in Yan’s paintings features simple brush strokes that reflect a personal sensibility. The sparse and near abstract brush strokes recall an idealistic version of West Lake in his mind and memory. Or perhaps they capture the West Lake so often extolled by cultivated literates in the history of literature, art and aesthetics. Yan Shanchun graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) with a B.A. degree. He lives in Shenzhen and Hangzhou and he is currently deputy director of Shenzeh Fine Art Institute. His works have been shown frequently in China and were also included in 80th Annual International Print Exhibition in 2012 in Japan and China Abstract Painting Now in 2011 in Germany.

Image: © Jiang Dahai, Tina Keng Gallery