On the afternoon of December 12, 2015, “Collective with Individual – Youth New Ink Painting Nominated Exhibition” opened at Rightview Art Museum, Sun Lei serves as the Academic Chair of the exhibition, jointly curated by Yue Haibo, Dang Zhen and Li Zhaoqiu, to present a total of more than 80 pieces by the painters who were born after 1980, the participating artists include: Bi Xiaohui, Cheng Baozhong, Deng Yun, Ding Guotao, Ding Yixiang, Gai Qi, Gan Chaocun, Li Jing, Liu Qingguo, Qi Yushun, Tang Xiaoyu, Wang Fang, Xing Nana, Yang Shikui, Yue Xiaofei.

For the current active exhibition sites, it is a special show, which is not only because the painters were born after 1980, and also reveals a new trend of the contemporary ink painting. Director of Rightview Art Museum Sun Zhizhong introduced that the curators of the exhibition were the professional teachers of the participating painters, so it was a show planned for the students by the teachers, which was hardly seen in the exhibitions, it showed that the teachers loved and supported their students both in the school and the society, and also reflected the relationship between teachers and students was equal in the professional field, and a kind of more open teaching perspective.

For current creation of young ink painters, Academic Chair Sun Lei discussed the kernel force to promote the development from the dialectical perspective of “failure” and “success”. For young artists, exploration and hard work is based on the dissatisfaction with “failure”, the judgment of the failure determines a person’s endurance and toughness, when the failure is as a block keeping people constantly reviewing themselves, constantly experiencing method, we will constantly find the self. There is neither any absolute failure nor absolute success, but it is a concrete harvest. If young painters hope to harvest “success”, they should learn to use a failed thought to treat the creativity, the fate of work, and the power to review the self. Such kind of “review” is a two-way street for the universities and colleges of art, working for the teachers and students at the same time, so that “teaching” and “l(fā)earning” actually become mutual correction for the “failure” and “success”, which is a charming “spiral”. For the new generation, “spiral” is not only a thought, but also a kind of attitude.

This exhibition is a typical example in the inheritance, reflecting the expression on the side, by the work of a group of young painters with a fresh ecology, although they live and grow up in a similar environment and context of ink painting, their attitude, language, emotion of ink painting are different from each other, they try a variety of failures, and try to win the self, accumulating a direct thought to varying degrees, the power of thought eventually deepens the self-cognitive attitude, which also implicates some kind of collective unconscious attitude.

After the opening of the exhibition, the participating painters together with the honor guests had a discussion around the exhibited works, recent situation of creation and dynamic situation of ink painting. Artist Yang Jianguo, critic Yang Weimin, curators of the exhibition Associate Professors Dang Zhen and Shi Lei from Shandong University of Arts, as well as the curator of National Art Museum of China Wang Meng respectively made a speech.

The exhibition continues to January 3, 2016.

Photo by Zhang Wenzhi, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.