The exhibition presents seventy works by thirty-five contemporary artists active in China and abroad during the past three decades. Organized into four thematic groupings—the written word, new landscapes, abstraction, and beyond the brush—the exhibition seeks to demonstrate that China's ancient cultural pattern of seeking renewal through the reinterpretation of past models remains a viable creative path. Much more than a continuation of earlier art forms, this process embraces radical abstractions, subversions, or reinterpretations of traditional idioms as viable ways to define artistic identity that are quintessentially Chinese. Although the artists considered have all transformed their sources through new modes of expression, one may recognize thematic, aesthetic, or technical attributes in their creations that have meaningful links to China's artistic past.

*image (left)
Song Dong (Chinese, b. 1966).
Printing on Water (Performance in the Lhasa River, Tibet, 1996), 1996.
Thirty-six chromogenic prints; each 23 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Promised Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky (L. 2011.70.6)