The introduction of natural materials such as traditional Chinese medicine, ingredients, plants and pearls instead of ink pens to create a naturalistic ready-made art, Liu Haisu Art Museum's new New Year's Eve solo exhibition "Youlan Empty Valley Baiyun Leisure - DaHan Special Exhibition" is eye-opening.
Born in 1967 in Yong'an City, Fujian Province, Da Yan studied painting since childhood, and was later admitted to the Oil Painting Major of the Art Department of East China Normal University, where he studied Western painting, and after graduation, he taught at the Department of Architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University. In recent years, he has lived in Yandang Mountain, where the mountains and rivers are beautiful, the birds are singing and flowers are fragrant, the forest springs are babbling, the stars and moons are clear, the empty valleys echo, and the orchids are fragrant. This exhibition takes people back to the spiritual Youlan Empty Valley that they originally had.
As a representative Zen artist in contemporary China, DaHan's creation is not just a simple imitation and reproduction of real-life things, but also a reflection on the integration of traditional Chinese philosophy and Western artistic language in this world.
The artist's creative themes span the sense of form, but are more committed to living around the present, and actively participate in society, presenting the understanding and thinking results of "Zen" in daily life through creative practice, these creative themes are not divorced from real life or "nihilism", but closely related to the exploration of daily life.
The exhibition of "Chinese Herbal Medicine Series" is the main creation of Dahan since 2019. This series of works presents linear brushstrokes and confusing textures, and the cultural poetry of blending Chinese herbal medicine with pearls, gold wires, precious stones and other materials that symbolize holiness, and is a naturalistic ready-made art as a Zen aesthetic.
In order to match the festive atmosphere, this exhibition also specially selects the works of the Dahan Festival series. Among them, the work "Winter Solstice" is made of wood planks, bamboo, raw lacquer, linen, acrylic, Chinese herbal medicine, grain, angelica, ruby and resin; the work "Lichun" is made of wood planks, bamboo, raw lacquer, linen, acrylic, Chinese herbal medicine, grain, jade, small lanterns, resin, etc.
China's artistic exploration after the end of the 1970s, with the help of modernism and avant-garde language, began its own process of artistic modernity. DaHan also went through this process. From expressionism and abstract art to ready-made materials, through the genealogy of this language, an attempt is made to enter the exploration of the formal system of the language itself from the self.
Curator Zhu Qi pointed out that the art and pure formal aesthetics of the artist can still find traces in dahan's works. For example, the occasional color mood and tonal contrast, the interspersed structure of the picture form, the expressive brushstrokes and the confusing texture, the cultural poetry of a certain symbolic form and the experience of pearls, gold wire, dead leaves and other materials.
Author: Fan Xin
Editor: Tong Weijing
Editor-in-Charge: Xuanjing
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.