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Contemporary
Artist: Chen Qi(1963~)
Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts,
Member of Chinese Artists Association.
Education:
1987 BA in Drawing, NanJing Institute of Fine Art;
2006 PhD in Fine Art, NanJing Institute of Fine Art.
2010 Chen Qi Art Tour:
Three Dimensional China exhibition, Exhibition of Thessaloniki
International Book Fair, Greece, artists include: Sui Jianguo,
Xu lei, Leng Jun, Chen Qi etc.;
Being, GuanShanYue Museum;
Art Beijing 2010 Expo.
2009 Chen
Qi Art Tour:
Frankfurt Book Fair: Revival of Tradition;
World Trip of Chinese Art, Vienna;
ShContemporary 09, China;
Art Beijing-Fine Art Fair
Solo Exhibitions:
1992 JiangSu Art Museum;
1993 National Art Museum of China;
2006 FengDanYuLu Museum, NanJing;
2007 Workshop in Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK;
2008 Oriental Museum, Durham, UK.
2009 Chen Qi~1963, the Making of Water, Amelie Gallery Beijing.
Awards:
Merit & Copper Award of the 7th, 8th, 9th National Art Exhibitions;
Golden Award of the 13th China Print Art Exhibition;
LuXun Printmaker Award by Chinese Artists Association etc.
Public Collections:
China National Art Museum, British Museum, Victoria & Albert
Museum, ShangHai Museum, GuangDong Museum, Sotheby's Institute
of Art in London, Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, New York Public
Library, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, European Woodcut Foundation
etc.
Curator's Review
Beginning in the '85 New Wave, Chen Qi bravely transformed and
moved beyond modernism, incorporating the lighting ideas of Western
paintings and expanding water-based printing beyond its original
limitation to Chinese ink painting and modernist aesthetics. He
explored water-based printing's contemporary expressive abilities
through independent artistic language. His printing process dampens
the limitations of the original draft and makes use of the artist's
subjective consciousness in the process of creation. The flow
of consciousness is conveyed through the improvisational spirit
and the free-moving marks. Especially praiseworthy is his attention
to the conceptuality that arises from the creative methodology
of water-based printing as a component of cultural heritage, entering
into contemporary experimentation that transcends aesthetics.
- Tony Chang
Artworks Introduction:
Water Series: Chen Qi's expressions of water are quite
risky and daring. There is no normal visual center in the picture,
just the undulation of the ripples rendered in light and dark.
But this really is water, the water we see, drink and wash with
every day, the waters of the North Sea in Chuang Tzu's Aimless
Wandering, the water that Confucius sighed about when he faced
the river, the water that in ancient Greek philosophy could never
be stepped in twice. It has no set appearance. In nature, water
is both the most abstract and the most concrete material. It is,
in and of itself, a metaphor for change, and a metaphor for time.
Time passes swiftly like flowing water. What flows in this work
is the mark of time.
Flames of Consciousness in Material Details: Lotus Series
Completely discarding with the Chinese painting traditions regarding
the atmosphere and implications of lotus flowers, he presented
a different kind of pure mindscape. The opening or wilting of
each flower, its blooming or closing, is a visualization of the
mental realm. In Buddhism, when those on the path of cultivation
look inwards on themselves, they imagine a lotus flower unfolding
from the area around the navel, and light emitting from it. Each
flower in the Lotus series is like a lamp from the depths of the
heart, and their "internal light" is the clean, pure
spiritual quality of the Lotus series. It transcends specific
materiality and becomes a pure mindscape.
Carving Time
24 Solar Terms: Those landscapes are fragments of the river
of time, like occasional scans from along the journey of life.
Looking at those images, it is as if we stand beyond time, listening
quietly to the sounds of its flow. I have come to realize that
this is Chen Qi's awakening to time in space.
Chen Qi's sensitivity to time is conveyed in
his understanding of the "solar terms". These "solar
terms" are the markers of changing seasons in China's lunar
calendar, the ancients' summing up of the order of climate and
time, based entirely on changes observed in nature. In 24 Solar
Terms, Chen Qi turns the "solar terms" into a viewpoint
on time, conveying the most apparent iterations of seasonal moments
that appear in his field of vision.These landscapes exude a tranquil
atmosphere, giving the pictures a distant, faint sense of emotion.
This is an Eastern-style "quiet observation". What he
sees are the silent, invisible changes taking place in the world,
the sound of time flowing within the changing of the seasons.
-Wang Fang (Vice Dean of the Nanjing
Academy of Art Media College), excerpted from Carving in Time.
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