Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (D.T. Suzuki) began teaching a series of seminars on Zen at Columbia University in the 1950s. Among the audience were Arthur Danto (1924- ) and John Cage (1912-1992), who were both greatly influenced by Suzuki’s teaching of Zen. The “normal mind” of Zen taught Cage to live in the natural state of life. Everything is in a natural state of existence. Suzuki’s Zen ideals encouraged Robert Rauschenberg during his early creative period. Recently, during Rauschenberg’s exhibition in China, many people said that Rauschenberg had a profound influence on many Chinese artists. As everyone knows, Zen culture indirectly affected Rauschenberg, enabling him to boldly inject the essence of living things directly into his artwork. Going back even earlier, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, and other such modern artists were also inspired and influenced by Eastern culture. To some extent, Eastern culture had opened up another window to Western modern art, which had already entered a state of predicament.

In retrospect, when China was inundated with modern Western thought in the 1980s, the works of Chinese artists went through enormous changes. As modern and contemporary integrated and grew, they blended into a point somewhere between East and West, enabling contemporary art to thrive. Among those artists, some did not depart from the experiment of modern style. As they absorbed the nutrients of modern art, they paid even more attention to how to “let the spirit and connotation of Chinese culture find the most appropriate method of expression.” Liang Shuming said, “Chinese culture makes life into wisdom.” This is completely different from the Western ideals of science and reason. Artists who grew up in a Chinese cultural background harbor a conscious or unconscious tendency to "Eastern calligraphy". We need to build an aesthetic system of modern art with our unique Eastern culture as the foundation. The “Eastern calligraphy” here is a very broad concept, which refers to artists absorbing the nutrients of modern art from the perspective of Eastern culture and identity, while also atoning for the deficiencies of modern art.

This series of exhibitions, Post-80s Generation's Modernism, attempts to establish China's own aesthetic system of modern art through the long-term observation of art practices that happen in the moment, and then research and sort out different artists. Continuing to go more in-depth after the main frame of the first exhibition last year, Post-80s Generation's Modernism II: Eastern Calligraphy selected seven post-80s artists with “Eastern calligraphy” tendencies. Manifesting their own creative aspects, artists Chen Jiaye, Hu Saienis, Li Chao, Sun Ce, and Yi Guodong specialize in painting, while artists Lin Zhi and Zhou Yiran specialize in sculpture.