More than once I have asked Xie Nanxing to explain the secret magic behind his painting. When we struggle to find some guiding principle behind the variations of his imagery in his work, are the materials he uses important? By way of response, Xie points out that my curiosity points to a false proposition. This…
Read MoreIn Return from Sichuan, there is a relationship to religion. I create a scene that is open to misreading. Contemporary painting has extended its boundaries of interpretation. Like many things associat…
Read MoreZHAO GANG JOINED the hutong-dwelling impressionists the “Stars Group” when he was only sixteen years old. He went on to win a scholarship to study abroad in 1983, and soon integrated seamlessly into t…
Read MoreBERLINDE DE BRUYCKERE seems to be something of a sage. She has not left her hometown of Ghent for more than 20 years; she was born there, grew up there, got married and started a family there, all the while creating new artworks at her studio in the harbor district. She chose to open her…
Read MoreOVER THE PAST 30 years, Xia Xiaowan has painted countless images that are better described as deities, devils, or souls than as people. These images seem like those of gods in temples, vivid and lifelike, but nothing like in the natural world. In fact, in the 1980s and 90s, Xia studied the colors and brushwork…
Read MoreTHE TITLE OF Zhou Yilun’s latest exhibition at Platform China, “As There Is Paradise In Heaven,” immediately brings to mind the old proverb, “the heavens above are matched on earth by Suzhou and Hangzhou.” At the entrance to the exhibition hall, a faded painting scroll featuring the beautiful scenery of the West Lake is displayed…
Read MoreAT UNIVERSITY, GUO Hongwei was obsessed with analyzing the different styles of brushwork techniques corresponding to different periods of art history. But shortly after, he began attempting to abandoning them. From 2005 to 2007, Guo’s oil paintings mostly drew inspiration from his and his relatives’ childhood photographs. Regardless of whether these photos were in color,…
Read MoreTHE SUBJECTS OF my paintings are all familiar places and people, and that is because knowing them well, I feel confident in drawing them. Recently I made some small paintings on the streets of Beijing, chatting with the old men and women living in the hutongs, whose accents are so familiar to me. The scenes…
Read MoreOnce he discovered the professional and artistic work of one Raymond Fung, LEAP Contributing Editor Hans Ulrich Obrist took immediate interest. In Fung, Obrist saw a practitioner who had made real on the longtime crossover between art and architecture in a practice divided somewhat uncharacteristically into a “day job” as a municipal architect and a…
Read MoreAn important member of the “Post-Sense Sensibility” group of the 1990s, Zhang Hui has worked in media including installation, theater, and performance art. And then, five or six years ago, he turned the larger part of his attention to painting. Zhang shares some thoughts with LEAP about this shift in his practice. I’ve told this…
Read MoreI hire models for nearly all my paintings, but sometimes I also find subjects through friends or acquaintances. A few days ago I was at a Prada party, and I saw a very pretty woman, so I took her photo. I collect these materials, but I don’t use everything. Some remain just as ideas. When…
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