Reflected the artistic spirit of the well-known US-based Chinese artist Zhong Genglue, “Green Space: Infinite Memories - Zhong Genglue Painting Exhibition” is on display at the Art Museum of the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting from 15:30 on October 18, 2014. The exhibition is hosted by the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting Affiliated to the China National Academy of Arts and Lingnan Fine Art Institute, organized by the Art Museum of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting and Lingnan Museum of Fine Art, in cooperation with the Chinese Oil Painting Art Fund of Chinese Literature and Art Fund and receives sponsorship from Shandong In Zone Art Museum. The exhibition contains the latest representative works created by Zhong Genglue since he returned to China in 2008, showcasing a total of 67 works covering the creations and sketches of oil painting landscapes, pastel paintings and colored pencil paintings. In these works, he used a whole new appearance and perspective to render his artistic explorations in recent years. After returning to China in 2008, he came back to his hometown in Lingnan district and extracted the “pure” and “true” beautiful landscapes which move him, in such a perennial green space, in contrast to the present polluted rivers and increasingly disappearing green ecological environment. Through the description of his brush, an unpolluted original natural scene without any artificial ecological destruction is reproduced and presented in front of the audience, which is a “pure” and “true” artistic state of mind. In the green space, he used the elusive green colors to perform a tough self-challenge, and intensively refining and romantically exaggerating painting. From the perspective of beyond convention, he used subjective images of the mind to restructure the ideal green space, performing another kind of challenge. Zhong Genglue always constantly challenges himself, constantly transcends himself, to climb to the peak of his mind. Zhong Genglue carves out an artistic road to his personal character in the hard process of constantly climbing. He still continues to climb, and gradually perfects himself, to pursue the “pure” and the “true” in his mind.

Preface of “Green Space: Infinite Memories - Zhong Genglue Painting Exhibition”

Zhong Genglue is a rigorous and elegant artist, and has an academic thinking and temperament. After the reform and opening of China, he had consistently adhered to through “Art Study”, the journal held by Central Academy of Fine Arts to introduce his thoughts, and knowledge of art from the United States to Chinese readers in the form of writing special study articles. Those articles mainly introduced contemporary art in the United States, expressing his artistic opinions and academic viewpoints, to connect American contemporary painting with worldwide painting from his perspective. He still maintains an in-depth contact with several domestic scholars (Shao Dazhen, Zhong Han).

When faced with problems, he has a clear thinking, being objective and intelligent. In 1989, I met Mr. Zhong in New York, the United States, because we were newcomers to the United States, we were uncomfortable with various things of the country and felt strange, it was fortunatethat he and his wife Li Ying took special care of us, and gave many useful suggestions for us to learn American art and face the issues of how to survive, so that we avoided detours and mistakes in the United States.

Mr. Zhong gained his early artistic skill from training at the High School Affiliated with Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in Lingnan district, so that he had a solid academic foundation, and he started from Chinese ink painting, deeply understanding the integration of Chinese and Western painting concepts and skills as advocated by Lingnan Painting School. After he went to the United States, following a large number of readings, visiting museums and galleries, he had an extensive and in-depth observation and research of Western contemporary art, and constantly communicated with American artists. Starting from the rigorous and rational American Photographic Realism sketches, through delicate and tight brushworks he constructed a clear and concise screen, which gave thanks to his previous art practice. But he is a Chinese painter, his paintings reveal an aesthetic taste, the painting poetic and humanistic temperament that is diverted from Chinese philosophy. He benefited from his early training in Chinese ink painting and profound traditional Chinese cultural roots, which also constructs a unique painting language. In his early paintings the urban architecture, streets in modern cities, shadows on the walls all reveal a kind of Chinese aesthetic interest and poetic nature, implicating the Oriental reverence to nature, and the reflection and pondering triggered by nature.

The exhibition is themed on “Green Space – Infinite Memories”. On the one hand, it showcases the works created in the “green space” of Lingnan district by Zhong Genglue after his return to China, so that these works have a different visual and mental communication with the artists in the northern provinces. On the other hand, we also offer our “infinite memories” to our friend Ms. Li Ying, Zhong Genglue’s wife. Because Ms. Li had such an unrealized wish that Mr. Zhong Genglue could hold a communication exhibition at the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting, so it is also to fulfill her unrealized wish.

Thanks to Mr. Zhong Genglue again for his consistent persistence in art, as well as his academic sincerity.

Yang Feiyun, artist, Dean of the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting

Written on September 16, 2014 in the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting

About the exhibition

Title of the exhibition: Green Space: Infinite Memories – Zhong Genglue Painting Exhibition

Opening Reception: at 15:30 on October 18, 2014

Duration: October 18 – November 2, 2014

Venue: the Art Museum of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting

Host: Chinese Academy of Oil Painting Affiliated to the China National Academy of Arts, Lingnan Fine Art Institute

Organization: Art Museum of the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting, Lingnan Museum of Fine Art

In cooperation with Chinese Oil Painting Art Fund of Chinese Literature and Art Fund

Sponsor: Shandong In Zone Art Museum

Courtesy of the artist and the Art Museum of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.