Hong Ling: Beauty of the Nature is Hong Ling’s first large exhibition in his artistic career of forty years. This includes Hutong Alley series, Portrait series, Human Body series, Hometown People series, and Abstract series from the artists’ learning and experimental phase in the early eighties, to the independent, complete series of landscape oil paintings.

Since the nineties, Hong has been implementing a unique Eastern language to support Western media, constructing his independent painting space. For this reason, Hong constructed his own studio in Huangshan, the embodiment of Chinese landscape culture, expressing a precious landscape realm away from the real world. He has always valued the features of oil painting material. He did not relinquish the expressive methods of oil painting media. Instead, he adopted a Chinese method of contemplating nature to express himself in the landscape oil painting that hovers between like and unlike, illustrating the experiences of an individual life and pursuing an artistic world of the integration of heaven and human. He references the styling concepts and techniques of traditional painting and integrates them with Western oil painting art forms, creating artworks that encompass the aesthetic spirit of Chinese painting. He attempts to activate and regenerate the traditional Eastern culture spirit, and gradually set up his own landscape language system. He is one of the few artists in the Chinese painting scene that can represent the cultural spirit of Chinese landscape. His works integrate the aesthetic quality and philosophical spirit of traditional Chinese landscape, which serve as a continuation and innovation of traditional Chinese landscape culture.

This exhibition draws upon the statement “Heaven and earth proceed in the most admirable way, but nothing is said about them.” from Zhuangzi: Knowledge Rambling in the North. Heaven and earth go along a natural path. They do not need a reason to be admirable, because they themselves are admirable. In his art, Hong pursues the conception of “heaven and earth proceed in the most admirable way, but nothing is said about them” in Zhuangzi aesthetics. In front of the vast universe of nature, only those with a devout heart who return to the complete truth can feel the beauty of the universe that encompasses everything. Hong’s understanding of the spirit of the overall Eastern culture is based on this. He took root in Huangshan for over twenty years, constructing large landscapes that do not recognize north and south, or differentiate east and west. His paintings surpass the general scenery paintings that mainly leaned towards reproduced natural beauty. From the source and spirit of traditional Chinese landscape culture, Hong explored and created the language of landscape painting. Not only did he receive the “bones of the mountain”, he also obtained the spirit of the magnificent natural world. Hong “did not pursue fame and status; outside the room there is only landscape”. He stayed away from impetuous fame, hiding along in the embrace of Huangshan. He lived alone in a big cottage, and boldly guarded himself. If we were to say that Shi Tao is the spirit of Huangshan, Mei Qing is the shadow, Jian Jiang is the substance, and Binhong is the meaning, then Hong Ling is the emotion. This scenery and emotion led Hong’s artistic concept and language to gradually become, amidst his contain creation, a spiritual expression of contemporariness.