Emergence - A Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition

Artists

Li Wang

Li is a professor in the department of Printmaking at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and a researcher in the Art Development Center of the Ministry of Culture. His work features in public collections, including the Shanghai Art Museum and the National Art Museum of China. His work has also been the subject of many solo exhibitions in South Korea, France, Germany and the United States.

In 2018, he was invited to Ipswich Museum, in the UK, as a speaker. In the same year, “The Way of Ink” exhibition was held in New York, featuring Li and five other artists. In 2017, he held a solo exhibition in the Salomon Art Gallery, in New York, USA. He was also a winner of the “Lorenzo Award” for drawing in the Florence International Art Biennale. In the same year, Li also attended the exhibition, “Post-orientalism - Contemporary Painting Exhibition in China”, at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. In 2016, his work was displayed in “Visions of China” an international touring exhibition of Chinese artists.

My works in this exhibition are representative. They reflect the influence of traditional culture in present lives. We are living in an era of lavish materials, which, at the same time, brings us a lot of problems. For example, the relationships between humans and nature, humans and the environment, and humans and other species, are in tension, which brings us a sense of anxiety.

Traditional Chinese culture advocates harmony of Heaven and Man and harmony of Nature and Man. Modern society is being overwhelmed with struggles and abnormal aggression, and our human lusts are infinitely exaggerated. We are facing shortages of resources, damage to nature, and plunging numbers of animal species.

For these reasons, we desperately need a culture that restores and balances relations between Nature and Man. That is why I believe that the harmonious relationship between Nature and Man that is advocated by traditional Chinese culture is exactly what we need to solve our current problems.