On January 20, 2016 (Beijing time), jointly sponsored by the China Arts and Entertainment Group, Athens Municipal Culture, Sports and Youth Organization, Beautiful Assert (Beijing) Art Industry Co., Ltd., and CIEA·BA Exhibition Co., Ltd., Text of Imagery: Chinese Contemporary Art in Greece was grandly unveiled at the Center of Art in Athens, Greece. The exhibition brings together the artworks of ten famous Chinese contemporary artists, aiming at showcasing Chinese traditional cultural essence and current social spirituality through the technology of contemporary painting to deepen the western audience’s understanding of contemporary Chinese art. The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture at People’s Republic of China, in cooperation with the local organizations of Athens. Curator Sun Lei, artist Ding Yi and hundreds of native cultural personnel and art lovers attended the opening ceremony.

The exhibition is curated by the famous curator Sun Lei and he has intensively featured the classic works by the top artists in China such as Ding Yi, Jiang Ji’an, Liang Quan, Lv De’an, Li Lei, Qiu Zhijie, Shang Yang, Tan Ping, Wang Gang and Zhang Chun Dabao. In the view of Sun Lei, the Chinese cultural extension is very special in a philology sense, the relationship between character and the graphical world is relatively direct, and it retains the symbolized and associated style of the art and keeps the trace of “form” on the level of “imagery” rather than classifying the symbol into the noumenal narrow order, therefore, there is no expressive style for absolute ontology in the abstract construction on a language level, because it is always bonded to the intervention of the identifiable “image” in the order generating “imagery”, as it is only seen from this point, Chinese abstract is an “imagery”. In essence, “imagery” opens up a way for us to understand the world, with experience running through it, thus it was “maintained” by the “realm”, and it is the inevitable environment obtained by existence itself, which is a regularization and dissociation from earthliness, to form a noble interface. That is to say, the interface of “realm” is precisely left to the abstract known by us. Although seen from traditional narrative mode, it seems to have characteristics of imagery, but it is more abstract in the present real contemporary context, and forms a textual tacit understanding with native contemporary culture.

It applies diversified approaches in the exhibition, the “Album” series by Shang Yang reflects the relationship between human beings, nature and society while emphasizing the absolute power of cultural kinship; “Untitled” series by Liang Quan continuously deepens the spiritual direction which is full of inaction and clearance in the color of tea and the skill of collage; Qiu Zhijie’s work pays more attention to the transformation of contemporary language of traditional abstract shaping; Jiang Ji’an pays attention to the survey of “item”, reproducing the truth image of “item” in the silk scroll, closely linking to the traditional context; Tan Ping emphasizes the “image” of language, to present the inner freedom of the “graceful” culture; Ding Yi’s “Cross” adheres to forcefully formalize the kernel of Chinese traditional culture and make it an action, to showcase the consistent sense of order; the works by Lv De’an and Wang Gang understand the cultural consciousness of the “Chinese situation”; Li Lei and Zhang Chun strengthen the emotional purity in the concept of language. In short, they use a different method of abstract expression to present a deep thinking in Chinese culture.

Beautiful Assert (Beijing) Art Industry Co., Ltd. is committed to promoting mature, young Chinese artists in overseas art exchange exhibitions, “Text of Imagery: Chinese Contemporary Art in Greece” Italy show, which was successfully held at the Castigeria Art Center in Saluzzo, Italy on December 12, 2015 going through to January 6, 2016, was the prelude to the main Greek show, while the Greek main exhibition is an overseas activity spanning Chinese Spring Festival, bringing a Chinese contemporary art visual feast to western audiences.

Courtesy of the artists and the China Arts and Entertainment Group, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO