- Shen Liang|Mao Ke
- 2021|12.11 - 2022.01.22
- Opening 2021|12.11 4pm
- Lin & Lin Gallery
Lin & Lin Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition of Chinese artist Shen Liang Mao Ke in December, the third solo show of the artist at the gallery, featuring his recent paintings, the Painted Book Series from Art Basel Hong Kong, independent project Journey to the West and his latest installation work The Passed Time in Memories. In recent years, he has been thinking about the issues of tradition and daily life and giving diversified contemporary perspective to traditional Eastern literati painting.
Mao Ke, the dialect from northeast of China refers to sunflower seeds, which were the best refreshment for Shen to pass the time in his childhood. They are the carrier of his hometown memories and a familiar daily habit. The name of the exhibition conveys the strong meaning of daily life, which is always implied in Shen's works. Just like in those days of lying on the sofa watching TV, eating sunflower seeds, and drinking chrysanthemum tea, the only things that mattered were trivial, as we lived in an ordinary world.
The installation work The Passed Time in Memories showcases the joyful school time in the artist's memories. Shen represents a repeated scene in his childhood by painting sunflower seeds on the school desk, text book, handkerchief and cigarette case. The time seems to be frozen, but in fact it is disappearing without leaving a trace.
"The afternoon sun shines on my desk full of sunflower seeds in the classroom. There are two feelings of time here. One is the warm happiness in the memories, and the other is the exclamation that time flies too fast and decades have passed in a flash!" – Shen Liang
The Painted Book Series could be regarded as the expression and extension of Shen's interest in imitating Traditional Chinese paintings, which are painted on the back cover of old publications to reflect Chinese tradition. On the one hand, Shen mischievously responds to Chinese ink painting in the form of "ink play", and on the other hand, he subverts the value and meaning through Eastern defacement. Thus, his works reconstruct a world of imagination in a way that breaks the rigid and suffocating dogma. At this time, the painted book is graffiti, a painting, and an installation as well.
The independent project Journey to the West elevates the fun of portraying Traditional Chinese paintings. Through his personal interpretation of the classic Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West, sometimes playful and sometimes serious, and the mixture of the contemporary art of graffiti and Chinese ink painting, the cultivation of Chinese traditional culture has entered nowadays people's life with a brand new outlook.
Shen Liang is like a playwright who writes stories without beginning or end, but does so with painting. Under Shen's brush, things which have rarely served as subject matter in traditional Chinese painting are transformed into daily scenes. He presents the most ordinary life scenery like Song Dynasty paintings in contemporary version and creates a new literati painting context in Eastern culture.
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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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