Gallery: Double Q Gallery
Artist(s): Nadia Ayari
Opening / Event Date: 2 Mar, 2024
Closing / End Date: 30 Mar, 2024
Contemporary by Angela Li is pleased to present Beyond Representation, the first Hong Kong solo exhibition of Chinese artist Yuan Daxi. In this exhibition, Yuan presents a new series of oil paintings created intuitively from the depths of his inner self, each brushstroke is guided by his impulse in the purest way to express his emotions and philosophical thoughts without recognizable imagery and artistic discourse. Beyond Representation is on view from April 23 – May 30, 2020.
Yuan was born in Fujian in 1973 and graduated from the History Department of Fujian Normal University. He began his training in Chinese calligraphy, ink art, Western painting and classical music since a young age. Yuan follows the “spirit of scholars” of traditional Chinese culture, with the belief that an artist should be interdisciplinary. Confucianism required ancient scholars to master six practical disciplines, including ritual, music, archery, chariot-riding, calligraphy and mathematics. The involvement of different disciplines gives a scholar the necessary all-round abilities to pursue higher spiritual levels and thoughts, a state of mind that Yuan is trying to achieve through his artistic practice. Yuan treats his creative process as meditations, a way to invoke his inner light and waken his deeper level of subconscious mind.
Yuan’s oil paintings in this exhibition are composed in an abstract style, with traces of harmonious curves resembling gracious strokes of Chinese calligraphy. He Guiyan, professor of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, art critic and curator, acknowledges that the brushworks in Yuan’s paintings show oriental connotation and are in certain ways similar to Chinese calligraphy. “Perhaps it was the artist’s passion for calligraphy since a young age, the emotion and ideology imbued in each line and stroke are correlated to the artist’s personal experience in looking at aesthetics.… In Yuan Daxi’s works, the notion and motion in his calligraphy and strokes in the painting are interdependent and interrelated in both practices; not only do the movements carry the expression of the artist’s emotions, the derivative of the lines also creates an endless artistic language of the work.” Heavy textures scattered around the canvases unfold the artist’s mind, shifting from awareness to a spiritual state. Both sculptural and painterly, these paintings serve as mirrors that reflect the artist’s transcendent journeys at the time of creation.
Covid-19 Precautions:-
To ensure the health and wellbeing of our staff and guests, we are taking the following safety precautions in our gallery:
Gallery: Double Q Gallery
Artist(s): Nadia Ayari
Opening / Event Date: 2 Mar, 2024
Closing / End Date: 30 Mar, 2024