“Myriad Visions Rise from the Void: Liu Shangying’s Art Exhibition” will open at the National Art Museum of China on June 16, 2015. Jointly organized by China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and China Oil Painting Society and curated by Fan Di’an, Director of National Art Museum of China, the exhibition will present over twenty large oil paintings from life that Liu has done in his most recent trip to Ali, Tibet.

In the pristine and chaotic atmosphere in Ali, Liu found the crucial point that joined his own pictorial style and his mind. Since 2011 he had made four trips to Ali, and in 2013 and 2014, in particular, he finished a couple of large paintings there. Painting from life there held special appeal for him in the sense of physical space, but more importantly, it meant consistency in terms of time. We can find in these works more disciplining effort in painter at work than stress on pictorial vocabulary or style. When the strenuous effort is removed from the control of the social system, ideas that used to be vague and stubborn give way to much stronger autonomy, and even all the knowledge and experience retreat, so one can get so fully immersed in the visible nature and sound, as well as something invisible, that he or she become part of the world around. As Liu said, “In contact with nature, I was trying to discover a profound connection with it. Then a kind of rhythm, or piety, came to me, releasing me from anxiety into serenity. Then to me, painting became reassuring labor or tilling in the plain sense.”

Fan Di’an condensed Liu’s artistic rendering into “myriad visions rise from the void”, a line from one of Su Shi’s poems, highlighting that Liu’s paintings feature a divorce from the concrete and episodic narrative aspects, but there is also a tendency toward “the grand” in terms of spiritual pursuit, giving these paintings different sociological implications rarely found in the conventional sociology of art. Facing nature, Liu “returned to zero”, dismissing the established rules and order in painting and focusing on the way his mind was working and the way the inner world was embracing the painting. In a “void” state of mind, he placed himself between nature and the canvas, translated the primordial nature that was unfolded before him and what goes on in his mind into pictorial “l(fā)andscape”, so as to reflect afresh the reality of human existence and the relationship between man and nature. Cezanne encouraged thinking while painting, and in the case of Liu, thinking is born of the tension arising from the union of his body, his emotion and the wild nature. It was transferred to the canvas with great expressive force by means of the visual relation between large scale, strong colors, intended images, and accidental happenings in painting, therefore presenting us “myriad visions” that not only echo internally with the life of nature but also reveal the remarkable vitality of painting. “Liu is not doing a painting of landscape－h(huán)e is painting in the landscape,” commented the French critic Robert Pujade.

The exhibition, comprising paintings, live footage and other related material, will showcase some aspects of Liu’s production as an artist. In a cultural context where painting is confronted globally with the challenges from the age of image, according to Fan Di’an, Liu, as a painter of the young generation, is academically courageous enough to explore the problems in contemporary painting with his unique reflection about painting and art production.

The exhibition will last to June 25, 2015.

About the artist

Liu Shangying, associate professor, vice-dean of the Oil Painting Department of CAFA, now teaches at Studio No. 3, Oil Painting Department, CAFA. Born in 1974 in Kunming, Yunnan, he graduated from the Middle School Affiliated to CAFA in 1995 and got a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Literature respectively in 1999 and 2004 from Studio No. 2 and Studio No. 3, Oil Painting Department, CAFA.

Liu’s paintings are concerned with nature, but he is related to nature not as a visitor or someone that experiences it but a trekker and explorer actively engaged in thinking about art. From “sitting in oblivion” in nature to “getting activated” by nature, Liu closely connects his art production with his act of painting. His paintings reveal strong artistic instinct derived from the moment and the place that helps to fuse the self into the landscape.

About the exhibition

Duration: June 16 through to June 25, 2015

Venue: The National Art Museum of China

Courtesy of the artist and the National Art Museum of China, for further information please visit www.namoc.org.