Shen Qin’s Solo Exhibition will open at the contemporary art hall in Suzhou Museum on July 18, 2015. The exhibition is entitled “Yin ? Yin ? Yin ? Ying”, themed on “Farmland” and “Garden”, it features more than 20 works of “Garden, Farmland, Village, landscape” series which were recently created by Shen Qin, as well as 7 representatives of the works created in the period from 1985.

The works of “Farmland” and “Garden” series will be presented at the great building which was designed by Mr. Bei Yuming, next to the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou, after residing in the North for years, the artist used sincere original emotion, with a geographical and cultural interpretation, to gently touch the “happiness” of childhood, hometown, and imagination. It is a spiritual world filtered by “ink and wash” though he escaped from the world and adhered to a spiritual sense over the 3 decades.

As a contemporary artist, Shen Qin is one that is closest to the kernel of the ink and wash and he is the one that moves absolutely away from his own tradition. He silently creates an intense art exploration, he refuses to vigorously try to accept Western art genres in the global art supermarket, to make ink and wash “modern”; he does not deliberately resist the contemporary vanguard of art, Shen Qin’s art is a silent self- presentation, which is irrelevant to both. Shen Qin has created a unique new space of ink and wash for us. It is filled with clouds and fog, exuding the aroma of ink and wash, being transparent, vacant, thin and ethereal, close or distant as well as hazy. Between the careful and casual, the irreplaceable special material essence of the ink and wash is maximized by the artist and the shading of light ink is wonderful, the construction of space retains the surreal dreamlike atmosphere of his earlier works, it is the mixture of real space and virtual vision, the crisscross of time and space. Especially the contrasting relationship between fuzzy, hazy rich layers of the shading of light ink and the distinct wiry thick ink lines which create an alienation effect, to constitute an interpreting space of multiple means, where the virtual and real, thick and light suddenly have the meaning of symbols.

It seems that, the water-based of “Yin ? Yin ? Yin ? Ying” has the natural attributes of Jinling, which is reflected in his painting style and taste. However, he left the city that was the ancient capital during the six dynasties, to live in the North and Shen Qin has maintained a strong criticism from his inner feelings of the Regions South of the Yangtze River. As a result, there is a double meaning of the interest and settlement, Shen Qin has become a real vagrant, an elegant loner lingering in between the North and South, between traditional and modern.

About the Artist

Shen Qin was born in Nanjing in 1958, and studied on the postgraduate course of Jiangsu Provincial Chinese Painting Institute from 1978 to 1982. Currently he is the national first-class painter of Jiangsu Provincial Chinese Painting Institute.

About the Exhibition

Duration: July 18 –September 13, 2015

Venue: Suzhou Museum, 204 Northeast Street, Suzhou

VIP Preview: July 17, 2015, 3:00 pm

The Opening Ceremony: July 17, 2015, 4:30 pm

The Organizer: Suzhou Museum

Courtesy of the artist and Suzhou Museum, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO, for further information please visit www.szmuseum.com.