This year is the 30th anniversary of the “85 New Wave Movement”. After the “85 New Wave Movement,” Chinese art was no longer a simple shelf for realism, nor a service for politics. Instead, it became about “letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” Meanwhile various artistic languages gradually emerged. Faced with an influx of modern Western thought, artists were extremely excited, even overwhelmed, perhaps. There was a sudden realization that the language of art is multi-dimensional and contains many different directions of expression. There is cubism, abstract expressionism, conceptualism, experimentation, and more. This opened the pathway to Western learning for most artists. However, the general public was unable accept the fact that art could become unacceptable or unreadable. Consequently, many people were quick to scoff at contemporary art. Amongst the torrent of contemporary art development, few artists were able to reach ephemeral status. In contemporary art, your medium could be oil painting, film, installation art, photography, or behavior, but your medium is not the important point. As a contemporary artist, the most important thing is whether or not your artistic language is able to bring out a new image and interpretation of human civilization. This foundation is definitely not fruitless. By going into greater depth, viewers are able to see a lot of interesting ideas. Contemporary art is a creation, an innovation. It is able to create visual images that we have never seen before. For the artist, this serves as a way to express themselves. For the audience, they need to be able to read art like a text. However, text serves as a form of direct expression, whereas art works present themselves in a more ambiguous form, leaving the viewers with more room for contemplation and imagination. In reality, the fact that artistic mediums are unlimited serves as an important feature of contemporary art. The important thing is not the medium, but rather how to effectively use the medium to convey an artistic ideal, create a new visual image system, enrich our world, and bring a sense of richness and resonance to our visual senses and spiritual dimension. We cannot, therefore, deny the value of contemporary art.

Soka has successfully operated this veteran gallery for more than 20 years. Witnessing the entire history of Chinese contemporary art and market development, we discovered that, even amongst such a complex collection of Chinese contemporary art, the majority of the artists possess an ineradicable “mark of China.” As Chinese people, we are unable to avoid the nurture of Eastern philosophy and civilization in the context of our personal growth. Accordingly, the “mark of China” lurks or directly manifests itself across their works. We pay attention to this class of artists and how, amongst this process of modernization, they have not discarded the resources of traditional Chinese culture. By using their respective artistic methods, artists are able to assimilate Chinese cultural roots into the development of contemporary Chinese art and thereby, through research and reconstruction, re-integrate Chinese traditions with new vitality. Thus, we have conducted a first “combing” of these types of artists. The 14 artists are as follows: Lin Fengmian, Chao Chung-Hsiang, Wu Guanzhong, Walasse Ting, Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Liu Guosong, Ju Ming, Shang Yang, Liu Dan, Lucifer Hung, Xu Bing, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Xu Lei. That these artists will ultimately return to their roots in Eastern art aesthetics is unavoidable.

Upon receiving the AIE award, Xu Bing said that, for him, “Awards, costumes, and banquets are like rituals that you must complete. They do not really give you stimulation and motivation for new ideas. In comparison, I believe that more motivation and ideas are to be gained from China itself. Compared to an AIE award, I am more interested in the energy and power that China can provide.” Xu’s words serve as a great explanation as to why so many overseas artists return to China to establish and develop studios. Only after leaving their country can Chinese people really realize the meaning of China’s five thousand years of ancient civilization. Overseas, that feeling becomes stronger. I have also witnessed the irrepressible excitement and passion of foreign artists in China. I have even seen foreign artists stationed in places such as Songzhuang, the gathering place of Chinese artists. When asked why they chose China, they said for its tremendous amounts of energy. Here, we aim not to promote the revival of Confucian culture or ancient rituals. Instead, we just want to increase the awareness and attention Chinese people pay to their own cultural energy and Eastern wisdom. We may not know what tradition really is, nor how to effectively use it. Yet, tradition is a real presence, and the works of these artists will, inevitably, embody some “mark of China”. Although the “mark of China” is subconsciously brought forth into their artworks, some artists are perhaps still not aware of its happening.

Based on the foundations of the first “combing”, we have made a second wave of “combing” this year, launching the exhibition, Looking for the “Mark of China”. The 9 artists are ordered by age as follows: Liu Ye, Zhang Huan, Ji Dachun, Zeng Jianyong, Tanjun, Ouyang Chun, Wang Guangle, Li Hui, and Li Chao. They each choose different mediums; Zeng Jianyong and Tanjun have not departed from ink, whilst Liu Ye, Ji Dachun, Ouyang Chun, Wang Guangle, and Li Chao use oil painting. Li Hui mainly used sculptures or installations and Zhang Huan a more diverse creative form, involving behavior, shelves, sculptures, and installations. The exhibition sets out to present a portion of the exceptionally rich contemporary art scene. A sample can serve as a microcosm for contemporary Chinese art. It can thereby lead viewers to discover, observe, and feel the inerasable “mark of China” through artists who grew up in this Chinese environment. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to ponder what kind of “Chinese mark” artists have carried with them from Eastern culture and China’s five thousand years of civilization. As artists, what should they extract from traditional culture before undertaking their own artistic creations and forming a unique artistic language and image system? What really is tradition? Amongst this body of Chinese artists, where is the “mark of China” and how does it feature in each artist’s identity? We hope that this specially arranged exhibition will be able to bridge the gap between contemporary art and the general public, and that, by letting viewers walk into Soka to soak up the joy of contemporary art, everyone will think a little more about their own culture.

The following are brief introductions to the nine participating artists:

Liu Ye (1964- ): Alternative Self-portraits

Liu Ye is considered to be an alternative figure in contemporary Chinese art. His art is neither "avant-garde" nor “academic”, experimental nor conceptual. By imbuing his works with characters that bear an eerie similarity to himself, it is as if he is putting himself inside different scenes and entering his self-created fairy tales. Each one of his works serves as a fairy tale written by the artist himself, each tranquil fairy tale carrying a hint of summer sorrow, almost like an alternative self-portrait of the artist. Recording his emotions and growth, they all become epics of the artist's own life. He says, “I have the same kind of passion for fairy tales that I have for philosophy. Fairy tales are fanciful and sensual, whilst philosophy is rigorous and rational. They both serve as endpoints of thinking, and my paintings meander within these two endpoints.” (Liu Ye : Temptation, Sperone Westwater Gallery,2006) It is well known that Jan Vermeer and Piet Cornelies Mondrian were both big influences on Liu. At the same time, Liu also admits that Chinese Song Dynasty paintings, such as works by Ma Yuan and Fan Kuan have also had a big influence on his artworks. Liu notes that, “Their work is not very formalist. The works contain a lot of psychedelic stuff.” Liu’s works also embody similar psychedelic factors, as well as a traditional beauty; solemn and lonely, rigorous and meticulous. His works are like fairy tale characters in a quiet poem. Pure blues, reds, and whites serve as iconic colors that appear across his works. Liu subconsciously holds his oil paintbrushes in the manner of ancient Eastern philosophers to illustrate his own alternative self-portraits, recounting beautiful and sad fairytales, one after another.

Zhang Huan (1965 - ): A Non-taboo Reliance

Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980 contains a section which says of Zhang Huan, “The eight years of experience that Zhang Huan had in New York helped to strengthen his consciousness, enabling him to be more aware of his status as part of China’s eternal identity, as well as an interest to Chinese history and culture. His creative focus gradually evolved, and, in addition to performance pieces, he began to ambitiously explore painting, sculpting, and engraving. Whilst adhering to a key focus on the body, these works also scale a wider range of topics such as cultural identity and spirituality. These are all themes that Zhang continued to explore after his return to China in 2006. Since 2003, Zhang has been increasingly referencing Buddhist thought in his works. Amongst these, his hollow bronze sculptures depict amplified body fragments – fingers, hands, feet, and legs – all based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution in which Buddha statues were destroyed. Zhang has also integrated his own body image into the Buddha images. In some works, he integrated bronze casts of his own body with Tibet modeled cast bells. In other works, he used his own portrait as a reference from which to generate huge images of heads. These heads featured the facial features of Buddha, such as long earlobes or heads covered with ash residue of incense surfaces.” So, the “mark of China” on Zhang’s identity is quite evident. In his selection of mediums, there are no taboos; they could be his own body or ready-made objects. His works ultimately rely on the roots of Eastern civilization. This exhibition features his works made after returning to New York from China such as Big Tree (2006) (part of the Door Series). In Big Tree, Zhang pasted a black and white photograph of the national army on an old door he found from the countryside. The mottles on the old door carry a piece of China’s history. The door bears the memories of time, and, on which, Zhang carves out detailed tree branches, integrated with real black and white photographs. The work depicts the historical memory of his homeland, China.

Ji Dachun (1968 - ): A Restrained Romantic Innocence

One of the most notable features in Ji Dachun’s work is the large amount of blank space. Although the depicted objects are placed in the center of his paintings, they only account for a very small proportion of the whole picture. The figures in traditional Chinese landscape paintings usually only account for a very small proportion of the paintings. Amongst such a vast landscape, the worship and awe that people feel towards the natural landscapes is sustained. To some extent, by situating his images in the center of large white canvases, Ji seizes upon this aspect of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Furthermore, due to the small and exquisite nature of the images depicted, each brushstroke must be restrained. The degree of restraint used is equitable to the meticulous brushstrokes of Chinese paintings. Where they used ink on paper, Ji uses acrylic on linen, conducting exquisite wrinkles, scrubs, dots, and dyes. However, his target is no longer landscapes as depicted by ancient people but, rather, people, or any objects,  that he can bestow images upon. In the center of blank canvases, viewers are therefore able to see various unrestrained Ji Style’s humor. For example, the colorful skeleton in Anatomy (2004) illustrates how Ji Style’s humor often adds a touch of romantic innocence to much of his work. In addition, the traditional Chinese landscape painting is seen as a growth of life. The result of a life that grows into a form does not contain the scientific perspective of classical Western painting, nor does it stress the effects of light and shadow. Ji’s paintings do not contain such shadows. Most objects have images bestowed upon them, so they do not grow according to logic. Each one of them eventually becomes a little life that can be labeled with the Ji Style’s mark. It is through this that Ji is able to carry his restrained romantic innocence to create Ji Style’s compositions and bizarre images that are able to coagulate with traditional Chinese paintings without losing the flavor of our times. With these fanciful ideas, Ji exerts himself as the engraver of Ji Style’s humor upon the “mark of China”.

Zeng Jianyong (1971 - ): Semitransparent Eastern Rhyme

An interview with Zeng Jianyong once pointed that, “Where is the association among my works? This is one of the questions that I think about most when I’m creating art. I oppose the use of ancient methods to show the content of ancient people. Even though I chose to create in the form of ink, the ink only serves as my creative medium. I want to use my own methods to express my own experiences. A characteristic of contemporary art is that there is no correct way to create art. Yet, an artist still needs to have their own unique form of expression. This is both the most interesting and the most difficult part of contemporary art. I should be considered a contemporary artist based on this value.” He was not denying his “mark of China”. By using ink as his creative medium, the inerasable “mark of China” inevitably illustrated on his identity. His series’ Captain, Childhood, Cosplay and Protagonist have all left deep impressions on people. The characters in the paintings seem to be in an unconscious state. In Zeng’s images of children, the children usually possess a pair of large and perplexed eyes; eyes that illustrate a sense of unknowing and uncertainty towards life. The pictures are presented in shroud of semi-transparency. Chinese traditional ink stresses cavalier perspective. There is no space, only planarity. However, Zeng uses ink and color in his works to render a certain sense of volume. Without Western oil paints, Zeng is able to use paints to express a sense of space without losing the unique Eastern charm and introverted temperament of ink. By using poetic ink colors, Zeng integrates his innovative “no-bone technique” with an interpretation of humanity’s conflict and uncertainty in contemporary society, together with the fragile state of our survival. The figures in the pictures are lost and confused, yet the screen is completed amidst a peaceful and tranquil setting. The conflict of contemporary and tradition has vanished from the screen, forming a language of ink imagery that belongs to Zeng.

Tanjun (1973 - ): Photographized Ink on Paper

Tanjun was once obsessed with photography and it eventually became an important media through which he found a new method of observation. By using a photographized observation method, Tanjun filters the complex images of the world in front of him to capture the candid moments and details of everyday things, before finally they are fixed as ink on paper creations. After professionally training in Chinese painting, he gave up the practice of using writing brushes to draw traces on traditional rice paper and abandoned “brushwork” in its traditional sense. On manually-colored long fiber Yunlong paper, Tanjun expresses his observations, as well as still images that are able to touch him. By using different types of live objects, even the various animal images of ancient Chinese culture, Tanjun presents a quiet and rustic attitude of Eastern conception. Each image he paints is a momentary recording of something that he has seriously considered and observed, featuring their existence after becoming static. Tanjun says that he views tradition as something very big. It is not just Chinese tradition or painting tradition, but the tradition of people. He regards all traces left behind as tradition and knowledge. There are so many things that can be imitated, learned, accepted, experienced, and realized. He believes that people can inherit some things, as well as experience them through spirituality. After an experience, objects are able to directly evolve into something which has correspondence to one’s own life. It is through this that the images in his works are given meaning in a contemporary context. As the environment becomes increasingly complex, Tanjun is able to express the loneliness, desolation, vulnerability, and frustration of life. Using a few simple smears of black, white, green, red, and blue with a brush, Tanjun “attempts to explore the possibility of tradition manifesting itself within a  contemporary context. By infusing the traditional temperament of his own soul and absorbing it with the art history of the past, he expresses the complex emotions of both himself and all sentient beings in their respective current living situations.”

Ouyang Chun (1974 - ): The Happiness of Endless Release

The works of Ouyang Chun are very straightforward. With wanton strokes and vivid colors, his works are like children's doodles, releasing his joy for painting inadvertently. Ouyang once went eight years without selling a single piece of artwork. Despite this, we still want to believe that he is happy when painting. It is precisely due to his love for purity and persistence that we are able to see these captivating works. Filled with the playfulness of children, his works imply an inherent logic, conveying the endless vitality of the colors within his pictures. He believes that the deciding factor in art and artistic quality is actually the artist's heart and, so, he does not pursue the “normal aesthetic sense of painting”. If the formal academic training of Ji Dachun has led to any rigidity, then Ouyang’s experience of being repeatedly refused by art academies is a completely liberating. It is precisely because Ouyang had no formal academic training that he was able to protect his most primitive and intuitive creative state, as well as his talent for color perception and sensitivity. With a frantic love for painting, Ouyang has detached himself from typical themes such as politics or history. Using a painting language of its original ecology, Ouyang is able to release a true and pristine replica of rare pleasure. Feng Boyi once evaluated the works of Ouyang, saying that, “The space for contradictory imagination has subverted the previous integrity of painting, rebelling against the typical meanings of classical themes. I think that he deliberately uses childish graffiti to process all-inclusive information images into simplified, interludial, and superimposed complex arrangements. This presents a context that embodies a beautiful mixture, as well as a matrix of tension. Thus, in his schematic structures and between the debris, Ouyang hides the visual effect of reconstructed fiction and reality. This provides an intuitive and unique perspective, leading to a mutual dialogue between the viewers and the author that transcends reality.

Wang Guangle (1976 - ): The Extremeness of Repeated Representation

For Wang Guangle, painting is like the repetitive process of labor. In his Terrazzo series, Wang illustrates the texture of terrazzo bit by bit, just like the process of writing one word after another. The final result presents the audience with a sense of abstract form, no longer existing merely as a representation of terrazzo. The extreme nature of these repeated representations has the unexpected effect of abstracted expression. By amplifying this, Wang transforms art into abstraction of the visual senses. To some degree, Wang also subverts the binary oppositions of painting forms, abstracts and representations. His Coffin Paint series is a good example of this. In Wang’s memory, the elderly people of his hometown would delicately start to paint red coats on their coffins every year until the year of their own demise. Using his painting method, Wang re-appropriates the local customs that permeate the Eastern philosophy of life. Using the same or different pigments, Wang methodically paints canvases over and over again until his brush is no longer able to make a mark. These actions eventually led to the Coffin Paint series. Infinite repetition does not represent singularity. Instead it brings out a greater degree of richness, scaling and the constant lapsing of time. The manifestations of the Terrazzo series and Coffin Paint series are rigorous and delicate and a result of the artist’s ascetic-like perseverance to repeated writing. It does not contain the narrative of mainstream art, nor a grand theme. Instead, he takes an object that embodies the trace of time, terrazzo and local customs permeated with ancient Eastern civilization, as, under the premise of emphasizing the constant “painting” action, the artist’s emotions lean towards historical experience through a fragmented creative process. This eventually forms new rational paintings that do not contain the “self”.

 Li Hui (1977 - ):  The Poetic Quality of Laser Sculptures

Using metals, acrylics, LED lights, lasers, smoke and various other modern materials, Li Hui has created a series of sculptures and installation art that features the eyeballs of “Bo” people. Double-headed Car and SOFA? CAR? both are made from altered Jeeps, whilst Amber was created from acrylic and neon lights. Then there are the works that use LED lights. The creative experience of the previous work becomes the derivation of the next. Finally it developed into a laser sculpture. By integrating an untouchable laser with various materials, Li is able to construct unexpected spaces, enabling the space itself to become a sculpture. He has been deeply influenced by Buddhism and Chinese philosophy, with a special interest in the transmigration of souls in Buddhism and reincarnation appearing across his works. Using lasers and smoke, Li combines a bed or a car abandoned in an accident. The car or bed are illuminated by red lasers, providing a strong visual impact whilst also exuding some sense of rituality, like a soul pulled out for reincarnation. His work envelops the audience. By letting the audience participate in it, the work can no longer just be viewed in the traditional sense. The laser device becomes a carrier for the artist’s self-expression. Through conducting these spiritual exchanges, Li’s art also belies his unavoidable Eastern cultural spirit. Li possesses a high grasp of the properties of different materials and though his own methods of control method, he is able to manifest the characters of different materials while releasing the emotions or inner themes that he aims to express. This is precisely like the poetic quality of his laser sculptures.

 Li Chao (1983 - ): The Calmly Bantering Spectator

Li Chao has a good foundation and research background in traditional Chinese culture. Li started to learn Chinese landscape painting when just four or five years old and his works are inevitably full of the elegance of literati. Having been born in the 1980’s under the market economy, he was able not to pander to the creative methods and aesthetic ideas of Western art. Instead, Li was extremely concerned with the unique oriental cultural system and its traditional resources. It is, indeed, very commendable. After early attempts at ink, video, and installation, he eventually returned to the creative state with oil painting as a basic medium. Faced with the popularity of conceptual experimental contemporary art installations, he jumped out of the so-called Chinese contemporary art "mainstream", instead becoming a calmly bantering speculator. By using his own recognized method to conduct his first Eastern revolution of contemporary painting, Li’s works are often drawn from certain historical events or Mythological characters of classical Chinese culture. If not this then there will perhaps be a strange and absurd shape accidently situated in a scene with pines and stones. It gives off a sense of playful banter. Li applies heave strokes on the paper to pile up texture, much like the three-dimensional “wrinkle” method of traditional Chinese painting. The sense of mottles is filled with old-fashioned connotations, whilst the warm and elegant tones bear an deeply Eastern flavor. However, there are some absurd images placed in the pictures that will sharply pull viewers back to reality. He is like a young hermit, adhering to a pure land of Eastern culture. Using the “small scenery of Jiangnan” to express respect for the ancient people, Li is able to transform painting into a weapon. He thereby resists this society and its loss of traditional cultural resources. 

Through this exhibition, Looking for the “Mark of China,” we wish to illustrate how enthusiasm for tradition does not only take the form of ink. In the present, due to the properties of so-called contemporary art, the trends and range of art have become even wider. This does not just apply to the cases of “New Ink” artists. We also believe that more and more people will come to realize that contemporary Chinese art bears a strong “mark of China.” This may even be able to set off a new wave in the international art scene and bring deeper nourishment and replenishment to world civilization.