Nandu News Reporter Xie Xiangnan On October 16, the famous cartoonist Cai Zhizhong's solo exhibition "Jue" opened in Shenzhen Ruotong Gallery. With the theme of "Awareness", this exhibition presents Cai Zhizhong's lifelong wisdom creation, which is the awakening of art, the awareness of self-examination, and the awareness of life. This exhibition is not only Cai Zhizhong's first solo exhibition in Shenzhen, but also the first exhibition of the organizer Ruotong Gallery. This exhibition condenses the works and ideas of Cai Zhizhong's life, under the spiritual temperament of the traditional Chinese literati Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, from comics to ancient classics, from Guoxue to astronomical geography, from artistic creation to philosophy of life, this is the thinking of a cartoonist and a practitioner, and also reflects the artist's reverence and piety for traditional culture.
In this exhibition, 28 paintings of "Water Margin" are rarely exhibited, covering thirty-six heavenly stars, and Cai Zhizhong uses the "Cai Lines" with great oriental charm to vividly and vividly activate the image of one hundred singles and eight generals, "between the similar and the unlikely", presenting readers with a new Water Margin hero spectrum. The exhibition also presents Cai Zhizhong's extremely rare large-scale creation, ink painting series. Most of the series are created after 2014, and his ink paintings are simple and Zen-like, with a few strokes but a remote artistic conception, conveying a clear and profound understanding of the wisdom of the ancient sages.
The reporter learned that Cai Zhizhong was born in Changhua, Taiwan in 1948. He became a professional cartoonist at the age of 15 and has been working tirelessly for more than 50 years. He devoted himself to the study of ancient Chinese cultural texts, and his works pioneered the classic comics of ancient Chinese books. During this period, he created many classic comics, conquered the book market with a number of Chinese classic comics, and achieved a total sales of more than 50 million copies, which were used in 59 countries around the world and read hundreds of millions of people.
It is worth mentioning that this exhibition also reproduces the corner of Cai Zhizhong's studio. Cai Zhizhong now lives in Hangzhou Xixi Wetland and lives in a double-storey villa of more than 900 square meters. The area he actually used was no more than 4 square meters, consisting of a workbench and an Arhat bed, on which were open computers, five rows of lighters arranged by color, half-smoked popcorn cigarettes, and spread out physical spectral research notes. The Luohan bed, which could be sat or receded, became his simple living room. The exhibition specially reproduced these four square meters, and visitors can leave pen and ink here and leave thoughts.
Cai Zhizhong said that in his heart, drawing cartoons is not to make himself a celebrity through it, but to like it from the heart, to draw wisdom and help himself to practice. Cai Zhizhong turned all the ambiguities into figurative cartoons, presenting traditional Chinese culture in the form of funny comics. The huge ideological system, through the hands of Cai Zhizhong, has become a vivid cartoon, a simple portrait, and a simple text, which has been interpreted into a story, a point of view, and an attitude. His Dharma, Sand Monk, and Bookboy are an annotation of history, a translation of culture, and a spiritual bridge of spiritual communication between ancient sages and modern people.
The exhibition will run until January 16, 2022.