At 10:00 a.m. on November 5th, the "Portrait of the Tree" Photography Exhibition of Li Ji, sponsored by the Academy of Fine Arts of Yunnan Academy of Arts and undertaken by the Photography Department of the New Media Art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts of Yunnan Academy of Arts, was officially opened in the exhibition hall on the fifth floor of the library of Yunnan Academy of Arts, and relevant leaders, teachers and students of Yunnan Academy of Arts and guests from all walks of life attended the opening ceremony.
It is reported that this exhibition exhibits a total of 29 photographic works created by Professor Li Ji with the theme of trees, presenting a wonderful natural ecological world about "trees" for the viewer.
In the preface to the exhibition, curator Guo Hao, president of Yunnan Academy of Arts, said: "For the vast majority of people, trees are just a whole noun concept, they are both a landscape in daily life and a living individual that we ignore. Few people other than botanists have taken an interest in and paid attention to the individual tree, a life form so closely related to human destiny that they have witnessed the entire history of human civilization. In the development of human civilization, trees have always played a very important and critical role. Li Ji shows us portraits of trees, bringing people into a fantastic and mysterious natural world. For a long time, few artists have used such an extreme expression to create trees and have taken many giant trees in the wild as subjects. These magical trees, rooted in all parts of Yunnan, are telling their own legends and stories in a special gesture, as well as the different cultures and traditions of various ethnic groups. For example, the work "Day- Bee God Tree", a huge banyan tree regarded by the Brown and Dai villagers of Jingmai Mountain, carries countless groups of life and provides homes and shelter for thousands of wild bees. The tree itself is an independent and complete ecosystem, symbolizing the perfect unity of harmony and diversity among different species. ”
Day-Bee Tree, Photo Paper Print, 2019
Chen Liu, Dean of the Academy of Fine Arts, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony: "Today we are particularly honored to introduce such an important exhibition to the College, which is the greatest support for the school for us and also brings a very good opportunity for students to share. From the perspective of my own understanding, Teacher Li Ji's artistic life is like a tree, it is constantly growing, branching and leafing. In the field of images, he interprets the ancient, historical, contemporary, and evolution of life from the past to the present to the future through the form of prints, oil paintings, and photography. From his works, we can interpret a lot of thinking about life, and from this point of view, Teacher Li Ji is admired by us. ”
The opening ceremony was also a special honor to invite Professor Li Sen of the College of Letters of Yunnan University to deliver a speech as a guest representative: "An important contribution of Li Ji's photographic works is that he returns to the understanding of the tree itself, although the tree has little to do with art, But Li Ji has developed his own language on the way to a tree. It fits into an important principle of phenomenology—going back to things themselves. Through photography, Li Ji returned to the tree itself in language. When Li Ji faced the tree with the camera, he used the multi-point perspective method to re-collage a tree. From our vision, a visual lie, through the collage of a large number of trees, great clarity is realized, and it becomes a dream tree, just like a dream bubble. Art is a language, and in the very process of generating things, Li Ji is created as a person, and his art is also created. The formation of this language is a sign of the artist's maturity. ”
Subsequently, He Yingyun, head of the Department of New Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts, delivered a speech to the opening ceremony: "Today we are here to usher in the long reopening of the photography exhibition of Teacher Li Ji, who, as the founder of the photography major and also my mentor, reflects the evolution of the photographic medium from traditional records to multi-media integration in the past 20 years. Teacher Li Ji's photographic works not only expand the extension of the photography discipline, but also enrich the connotation of video art. It echoes the inclusiveness and openness of the imaging profession under the guidance of the current "new liberal arts" construction. His creations include photography and painting, natural science, social investigation, digital technology and other fields of knowledge, and build a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary artistic creation system in cross-border exploration. Over the years, Mr. Li Ji has influenced many students with his unique methodology, and has also practiced the protection of biodiversity through artistic practice, and through his ecological art world, he has awakened more of us to care for and respect for living individuals. ”
Finally, the artist Professor Li Ji said in his speech: "Since we do not have a real art museum for the time being, it is difficult to choose to do the exhibition on the fifth floor of the library, because it is difficult to cause dialogue and three-dimensional display between works in this space. And my own desire is to be able to make a dialogue between the works. We wanted to put trees at different altitudes on the same platform, which was challenging for our whole team, and we wanted the work to be connected to the work, rather than presenting an isolated relationship between the works as usual in the exhibition. So I stood in the library for three whole days to find a connection between the spaces, but after our efforts, we finally reached a better presentation. ”
It is reported that from November 5, 2021 to November 19, 2021, the exhibition will continue to be exhibited in the exhibition hall on the 5th floor of the library of Yunnan University of the Arts.
This year coincided with the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held in Kunming, at this historic moment, the exhibition of Professor Li Ji's "Tree" series of works has a very positive significance, but also triggered the viewer to think more about the meaning of life, so that more people can participate in the protection of nature, the protection of biodiversity in the action.
Artist Profile:
Li Ji, born in 1963 in Kunming, Yunnan, graduated from the Printmaking Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1987 and is now a professor and graduate tutor at Yunnan Academy of Arts. From the 1990s to 2009, he has been creating contemporary art painting and photography, and his works have participated in Chinese contemporary art exhibitions held in Europe, the United States and many countries in the world, as well as art fairs such as Miami, Madrid, Paris, And Moscow, Russia. He has also held solo exhibitions in Essen, Germany, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chengdu and other cities. His works are collected by public institutions such as the Fraisiras Museum of Modern Art in Athens, The Red Mansion Art Foundation, the David Roberts Art Foundation, the Hong Kong Chinese Society, the Shenzhen Art Museum, the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, and the Cheng Xindong International Contemporary Art Space.