Xu Jiang: One Hill, One Valley

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Transitioning from monumental sculptures to landscape paintings, Chinese master Xu Jiang’s latest solo exhibition titled ‘One Hill, One Valley’ will present more than 20 pieces from Xu’s latest series, re-enlivening the Chinese tradition of landscapes through centuries.

In the past two years, Xu has begun painting the landscape of Jiangnan, while also resigning from his position as the President of the China Academy of Art. Despite still being busy, he finally has time to experience the sublime of hills and valleys. The mountains in Jiangnan are not high, yet they are exquisite. Yandang, Tiantai, Longquan, Fuchun River…many great masters were infatuated with them, inspired to leave behind many famous works. What Xu Jiang paints are precisely these mountains in Jiangnan: “Zhushan”, “Taishan”, “Quanshan”, and “Yashan”, they are not just mountains belonging to Jiangnan but are also the spiritual peak that Chinese painters and scholars uphold, like what Fan Kuan had expressed in Travellers Among Mountains and Streams during the Northern Song Dynasty.

Xu Jiang’s new works are titled “landscape”, not “scenery”. In fact, he has never been a scenery painter. From the city to Kuiyuan, he has always been more interested in depicting the “image” of how the painter and the painted subject blend into one – an important notion of “spirituality” originating from traditional Chinese landscape paintings. In a landscape, one not only observes but also experiences, walking through each hill and valley while integrating personal experience with the landscape. Thus, hidden behind the depicted surface of each landscape is its true essence of spirituality – expressed poetically as of the longstanding tradition of landscape painting in China. Interestingly, one may also find Xu’s emphasis on spirituality to resemble German Romanticists’ pursuit of morality and spirituality via the painting medium, which may be attributed to Xu’s history of studying in Germany in the late 1980s.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

As a professor as well as the Director of the Academic Committee at the China Academy of Art, Xu Jiang graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, China Academy of Art in the early 1980s, Xu then went on to study and research at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg in Germany in the late 80s.
 
In Xu’ visual representations – whether they are monumental sculptures that revolve around the imagery of sunflower gardens, or bold paintings of Chinese landscapes homage to traditional masters – they always conjure an acutely solemn sense of history, poetically discussing issues about history, nature, society, and life. His works also harmonically combine Chinese traditions in the emphasis on spirituality with the German Romanticist expression of morality and virtue, creating a unique dialogue on the semantics of art between two distinct cultures.
 
Xu enjoys the special government allowance from the State Council of China and has earned a reputation of “specialist” in Zhejiang Province, with several important prizes won, such as “Lu Xun Art Prize”, “Merit Award of the Second Beijing Biennale”, “China National Education Achievement Awards”, etc.