2021 - 2021 Art Basel Hong Kong｜Shen Liang

Lin & Lin Gallery is pleased to present Chinese artist Shen Liang at 2021 Art Basel Hong Kong, bringing artist's latest installation work The Passed Time in Memories, also featuring works of Bast Paper Series and Painted Book Series, that showcasing Shen's exploration of daily life presents the inner philosophy and expression of his discussion of the "traditional" Eastern literati paintings from a more diversified perspective, and how it is reflected in the "contemporary" daily life under the East-West confluence environment in nowadays, creates the literati painting belonging to this generation, therefore the charm and aesthetics of Chinese art has a close connection to the language of contemporary and modern painting.

The installation work The Passed Time in Memories, showcases the happy school time in the artist's memories. Shen represents a repeated scene in his childhood by painting melon seeds on the school desk, text book, handkerchief, cigarette case. The time seems to be frozen, but in fact it is disappearing without leaving a trace. The artist presents the memory through a visual approach, depicting the objects on the top of a desk, as Shen says "The afternoon sun shines on my desk full of melon seeds in the classroom. There are two feelings of time here. One is the warm happiness in the memory, and the other is the exclamation that time flies too fast and decades have passed in a flash!"

In Shen Liang's "repetitive painting" approach in his Bast Paper Series, he closely observes daily life and combines the spirit of Chinese ink with the medium and technology of Western art to depict red onions, melon seed husks, and garlic skins in a concrete way. By layering pigment, the artist forms simple renderings of objects that refer to their ontological states and embody an aesthetic tradition of object as reality. The artist dedicates his time to diligent brushwork and constant practice to realize the aesthetic tradition that runs in his veins. The long-term project Painted Book Series that Shen Liang has been working on, could be regarded as the expression and extension of its interest in imitating Chinese ancient paintings. He focused his attention on hundreds of old pictures, books and magazines he had collected, painting on top of the surfaces of the original publications, with fascinating results. Not only did he echo the image and layout of each book cover, but also by appropriating many readymade images from the Song and Yuan and adding spontaneous embellishments of his own, he produced new pictures with new meaning.

Mischievously, Shen interprets the lighthearted and elegant "ink play" of traditional Chinese painting by scribbling, and deploys the Eastern tradition of defacing books to subvert values and meanings, thus extending his skillful strategy of revealing connections and contradictions between high and low culture. Examples include Shen's depictions of fruit peels, melon seed husks, and flies in the elegant context of literati painting. Therefore, the Eastern literati spirit is reborn in the western techniques. In addition, through Shen Liang's personal interpretation, sometimes playful and sometimes serious, the cultivation of Chinese traditional culture has entered modern people's life with a brand new outlook.


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Shen Liang, born in Liaoning Province China, 1976, graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. His work is in collection of Seattle Art Museum, U.S.A., White Rabbit Gallery, Australia, The National Art Museum of China, and CAFA Art Museum, China. He has also had solo exhibitions in Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany, New York, U.S.A, Seoul, South Korea ,and Beijing, China.

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