Organizers: Guangdong Chinese Painting Society, Hunan Gongbi Painting Society, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Artists Alliance, Hunan Yongzhou Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television and Sports Bureau, Zhongshan Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Yongzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles
Organizers: Yongzhou Gongbi Painters Association, Zhongshan Artists Association, Zhongshan Chinese Painting Society, Yongzhou Art Museum, Yongzhou International Culture and Art Center, Zhongshan Xiaolan Town Committee of the Communist Party of China Propaganda and Education, Sports and Cultural Tourism Office
Co-organizers: Zhongshan Hunan Yongzhou Chamber of Commerce, Guangdong Xiaoyazhai Auction Co., Ltd., Lanshan Bayou
Exhibition time: August 9-24, 2024
Opening time: 9:30 a.m. on Friday, August 9, 2024
Exhibition location: Exhibition hall on the first floor of Yongzhou International Culture and Art Center (Workers' Cultural Palace).
From August 9, 2024, the Guangdong Provincial Chinese Painting Society and the Hunan Gongbi Painting Society will jointly hold a large-scale special exhibition "Love for Xiaoxiang: Special Exhibition of Chinese Paintings". The special exhibition consists of three parts: "Only Because of Persistence" - Chen Yongsheng Chinese Painting Exhibition, Yongzhou Gongbi Painters Association "Yongzhou Gongbi Painting Newcomers and New Works Exploration Exhibition in the New Era" and Hunan Gongbi Painting Masters Miniature Works Invitational Exhibition.
The "special" thing about this special exhibition of Chinese painting is that the solo exhibition of freehand ink painting with hearty brush and ink and the group exhibition of Gongbi painting, which highlights inclusiveness and experimentation, talk about Xiaoxiang's feelings and interpret the "dialogue" form of "freehand spirit", and at the same time, in a similar way to "image empirical evidence", make a "conceptual verification" of the "brush and ink" vocabulary of Chinese painting that "cannot be painted" with the meaning of "wanting to distinguish but forgetting to speak".
Chen Yongsheng, Chrysanthemum, ink and color on paper, 30cm×62.5cm, 2022
The exhibition "Only Because of Persistence - Chen Yongsheng's Chinese Painting Exhibition" will be presented in the exhibition hall on the first floor of the Yongzhou International Culture and Art Center in Hunan Province, showing the artist Chen Yongsheng's exploration and understanding in the field of Chinese painting over the years.
The experience of studying classical oil painting and realist painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Hunan Normal University laid a solid foundation for Chen Yongsheng's art, especially had an important influence on his systematic artistic thinking. Later, the experience of working and living in Guangdong for many years gave him the idea of "eclectic Chinese and Western, ancient and modern" artistic ideas of the Lingnan School, which prompted him to make an important decision, that is, to switch from the path of Western realist painting to the path of traditional Chinese painting.
Chen Yongsheng, Asking the Source from the Heart, ink and color on paper, 35cm×43cm, 2023
However, the road of freehand painting in Chinese painting is not very easy to follow, especially the synaesthesia and migration of the era and cultural background contained in it in terms of objective and subjective synaesthesia and subjectivity. Chinese painting, because of its excessively profound tradition and particularly strict procedures, is not too difficult to paint beautifully, but it is not easy to paint personality, style, and new ideas. Which way to take to step out of your own world? Chen Yongsheng was also distressed and confused.
After more than ten years of thinking and painting practice, Chen Yongsheng finally found his own path of Chinese painting. That is, from "the peculiarity of the ink, the charm of the ink and color, and the subtlety of the boneless painting method", to the plain and casual brush and ink language and painting practice, which adds the interest of life to his creation.
Chen Yongsheng, Lingyin Temple, ink and color on paper, 35cm×56cm, 2023
Painting, in addition to raising your head to learn other people's things, you also have to bow your head and go your own way. The things of the ancestors cannot be lost, nor can they be lost. Although there are many "micro-words" in the development of content and form of Chinese painting, the spirit of brush and ink and the painting theories established by the past dynasties are not replaceable today. Although these theories are "discontinuous" in time and space, or lack systematization, the "contemporary significance" of Chinese painting can better reflect the aesthetic characteristics of each era in the past, and leave a swan song of painting theory through the ages.
Chen Yongsheng, Nanling Jiaguo, ink and color on paper, 34cm×34cm, 2023
Chen Yongsheng's freehand works are detached in the double drawings of "Hidden Bone Line" and "Painted with Color", which basically highlights the word "writing". Whether it is the use of ink or color, it is the freedom and openness of direct writing, and the degree of freedom of casualness is the most suitable for Chen Yongsheng's artistic state. The formation of the artist's free and open aesthetic consciousness is inseparable from the absorption and integration of the aesthetic interests of Shi Tao, Zhu Qi and the "Four Masters of the Shanghai School" of the Qing Dynasty.
Chen Yongsheng, Into the Cold Autumn Sun, ink and color on paper, 35cm×50cm, 2023
Finding the personalized expression of the language of Chinese brush and ink is the key point in constructing the artist's personal artistic style. It is an artistic pursuit to reconstruct the images that seem to be similar and dissimilar through the alternation of complexity and simplicity, the concession of sparseness and density, and the juxtaposition of thick and light, so as to construct a chaotic but not chaotic dream space. After a long journey in painting, Chen Yongsheng pursues a return to an artistic state of self-painting.
Technique is only a means to quantify the image, and non-quantitative emotional and spiritual factors are the true meaning of painting.
Chen Yongsheng presented us with a personal answer to his pursuit of the true meaning of painting through "only because of perseverance".
Chen Yongsheng, Silent, ink and color on paper, 35cm×35cm, 2023
Chen Yongsheng, Shang Xian Keju, ink and color on paper, 35cm×43cm, 2023
Chen Yongsheng, Courtyard Wall, ink and color on paper, 18.8cm×26.5cm, 2022
Chen Yongsheng, Wu Lingyuan, ink and color on paper, 45cm×34cm, 2023
Chen Yongsheng, pen name Xuwu, is a painter from Hunan, Guangdong Province. He is currently a member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association, a director of the Guangdong Chinese Painting Society, a director of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Artists Alliance, an expert member of the Art Education Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Teacher Development Center, the vice chairman of the Zhongshan Artists Association, the vice president of the Zhongshan Chinese Painting Society, the vice chairman of the Xiaolan Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and the honorary chairman of the Xiaolan Artists Association.
His works have been selected for many national, provincial and municipal art exhibitions, and personal exhibitions have been held, and his book "Chen Yongsheng's Chinese Painting Collection" and prose "Void Enlightenment Collection" have been published by the national first-class publishing house. His oil paintings and Chinese paintings have been exhibited at the National Art Museum of China, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangdong Provincial Museum, Zhongshan Art Museum, Guyuan Art Museum, Jiangmen Art Museum, United States, Australia and Macao, China, and his works have been published in magazines and media such as People's Daily and Yangcheng Evening News, and some of his works have been collected by overseas and domestic galleries and private collections.