Learn from Masters

Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia

LEARN FROM MASTERS, as Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, will open at Palazzo Bembo, on May 8th, 2015. Curated by Dr. Yang Jie, from CAFA (China), LEARN FROM MASTERS focuses on ink art from China.

Its title in the Chinese version, “气韵非师”, is a quote from "Experiences in Painting: An Eleventh Century Art History of Chinese Painting" by Kuo Jo-Hsu, connoisseur, art historian, and critic from the Song Dynasty (1021-1100 B.C.). It means “everything but Spirit-resonance (Qi Yun) can hardly be mastered by learning”. It indicates the Spirit-resonance as the highest realm of art, and has to be achieved via individual’s mind practice towards the joint personality ideal shared among Literati community, rather than seeking knowledge from Master, that is, the most respected art can hardly be achieved by learning.

Chinese ink painting has created brilliant history independently of its own evolvement bringing a variety of visual art resources in completely different contexts from Western ones, which allows us to appreciate a different kind of great epics of art so unique in either its form, style or spiritual claim. As biodiversity is necessary for ecological equilibrium in nature, the diversity and varieties in human civilization also require comparative independence between different cultures, to keep each other’s uniqueness, as potential and profound resources for the benign evolvement in future world.

Chinese Painting is known for its ink as material and brushwork, with a more than two-thousand year old intellectual tradition, to construct an unbelievably subtle, complex, rich and profound cultural system, which extends to today still with infinite vitality and possibility, as well as rich value in futurology terms. In this way, Chinese painting featured as “Ink art” has academically received international attention. However, due to the rupture of tradition, mishap in communication, misreading in cultures and a number of problems and misunderstandings are still to be clarified in the knowledge and practices in Chinese paintings. Besides this, referring to a two-thousand year old tradition of Chinese painting as merely “Ink Art”, would be truly superficial and narrow, and leading to inevitable misunderstanding and misleading. Thereon, Chinese painting as one of the canons in Eastern art, its core value and essence calls for further research, interpretation and reiterate.

The exhibition presents six masters from ancient time to today in each of their own “restored” study, where original pieces are presented together with videos. Visitors present themselves in each of these studies to experience historical changes and the contributions made by these masters, while positioning themselves also in d’écart via the dialogue between the living artist Pan Gongkai with the five ancient masters: Gu Kaizhi, Fan Kuan, Ni Zan, Zhu Da, Wu -Changshuo. With the assistance of d’écart, visitors may develop some reflection on the change and unchanged in the two-thousand year long history of Chinese painting, as well as the dimension of spirit valued in Chinese painting tradition which indicated by LEARN FROM MASTERS, or “Spirit-resonance cannot be mastered by learning”, to further explore the core value of ink painting’s Spiritual Dimension and reflect its potential inspiration to Global Contemporary Art.

The exhibition uses interactive digital videos to have visitors experience the change and unchanged in the two-thousand year long history of Chinese painting, the Spiritual-resonance all through a variety of visual expressions, as well as the dialogue with Masters based on this, to interpret the efficiency of filter “Liveness: On epic duration” in the framework of the theme “All the Worlds’s Futures” by tracing, analyzing, and presenting Ink Painting.

The final part of LEARN FROM MASTERS is New Ink by contemporary artist Pan Gongkai, who generates contemporary and Chinese art by positioning himself in d’écart of Chinese and Western cultures, continue essence of traditional Chinese literati painting while referring to the context of Western contemporary art.

By presenting this newly generated art in d’écart with artist Pan Gongkai’s cultural self-consciousness and independence, we mean to contribute a possibility and reference of d’écart on confronting the common dilemma of all human cultures , via which we may have a chance to peep at All the Worlds’ Futures.

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