2022 - 2022 Art Basel Hong Kong

Lin & Lin Gallery will present the works by four great artists spanning more than a century at 2022 Art Basel HK - Wu Da-Yu, Liu Wei, Chen Chieh-Jen, and Shen Liang. Exploring traditional Chinese aesthetics is like traveling a path in a deep forest and catching a glimpse of the sun's rays. These artists savor the tranquil light cast on green moss in the waning day and once again interpret the modern language of abstract painting.

Wu Da-Yu creates impressions that resemble something without being literal. His wild brushstrokes and vivid colors form rhythmic spaces while delivering a spirit of natural harmony. He has said, "Beautiful dynamism [...] is like a well-wrought sentence whose essence is read instead of its words." This statement responds to the Chan Buddhist idea of not focusing on being and nothingness, and shows us how Wu's art is rooted in Chinese aesthetics. Besides occupying an important position in art history, Wu influenced many second-generation artists, such as his students Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-Ki, and Chu Teh-Chun, who blended influences from the East and West in their works.

Liu Wei's painting over these ten years can be described as awkward and crude. His figures suggest madness to unmask the phony standards in contemporary ink painting through deformation. Liu wields his brush as the clown would, and uses his ink in a crude manner. Closer examination of Liu's positive and negative space reveals that it is somehow ill. But this illness is beautiful, and Liu wields this beauty to distance his work from contemporary ink painting while promoting his ideas and shunning normalcy. Furthermore, this is an aesthetic of illness that responds to the contemporary idea of bad taste in the West, but with the black and white of a Chinese brush and ink.

In Chen Chieh-Jen's recent works Envisioning Ephemerality, Star Chart, and A Field and Non-Field exploring the concepts of Śūnyatā and transformation. Chen imagines the production of images while waiting and watching how these images continually transform. Although these images are destined to be incomplete, perhaps their most beautiful manifestation will emerge at a certain point in this constant transformation, or perhaps some parts of them will persist into a distant future when the artist himself cannot see or even imagine them.

Shen Liang closely observes daily life and combines the spirit of Chinese ink with the medium and technology of Western art. Through Shen's artistic training, his work embodies an aesthetic tradition of object as reality and is composed of depictions of red onions, sunflower seeds' shell, garlic skins and butterflies, which are layered upon one another and positioned in a large and open background. With meticulous brushstrokes, he creates the rhythms and impressions of ink landscapes. The artist dedicates his time to diligent brushwork and constant practice to realize the aesthetic tradition that runs in his veins.