Transformation of Abstraction

Zhang Xiaoling

August 5 - September 23, 2017

In the early 1990s, Gu Liming observed a new direction for abstract language in the pictures and new year pictures decorating Mawangdui wardrobes from the Han Dynasty.  This prompted him to create the two series, Han Mawangdui and Yang Jiabu Door Deities.  Constructing a new contemporary cultural consciousness from this, Gu launched a logical starting point from which to rediscover artistic language and value.  He attempted to reconstruct a personal, historically relevant, local, and modern artistic language that did not invoke the discourse or ideology of Western contemporary art.  We should further review Gu Liming’s works in the context of the development of Chinese contemporary art and culture to further clarify and highlight their importance.  He has always reflected from the midst of cultural patterns, exploring his own artistic situations and providing constructive inspiration.  This has established a position of importance for him in the course of development of Chinese contemporary art.  

In recent years, Gu Liming’s art language experiments have revolved around this thinking, resulting in the creation of the Landscape-Fu series.  This has allowed the science of traditional Chinese landscape paintings to become part of his line of questioning regarding nature at the moment.  This not only implies the loss of a traditional view of nature, but also means that he reveals the fragmentation of contemporary historical perspectives through multiple superpositions of artistic languages.  Regardless of what kind of themes Gu chooses, he always utilizes his own unique abstract form of art language to maintain an internal consistency of logic, so that his works may include a sense of history and reality.  Even those frantic lines embody the eternal implications found in the brushstrokes of traditional literati art.  With the quaint and simple lines of folk art and the uninhibited qualities of Western abstract lines, he produces a combination of traditional transmissions and Western improvisational expressions that is difficult to detect.  In this way, he displays a value of survival embodying historical meaning and actual culture that also serves as an all new contemporary visual schema.

 With a calm and collected composure, Gu Liming completes the transformation described above.  Compared to that restless, radical, and cynical warrior in the past, he is more like a witty and steady strategist who is able to transcend all existing language experimental scopes and achievements at any time.

Vice Dean of China National Academy of Painting, Art Critic Zhang Xiaoling 2017、7、17