Iris Art Museum will launch artist Bian Shaozhi's solo exhibition SPIRIT IN SPIRIT on July 14. This exhibition will present around 20 works, including several recent works. On site, we will be able to directly feel the artist's phased thinking in the past three years.
In recent years, Bian Shaozhi has explored the impact of copying and transcribing on the picture without photos in his comparative study of traditional paintings and contemporary works, so as to reach the inner image of the viewer without any obstacles. SPIRIT IN SPIRIT comes from Dong Qichang's 《Painting Zen Room Essays》that the artist often reads: "For example, in a word, there must be a place where the spirit is connected." In the new works presented for the first time in this exhibition, he draws inspiration from ancient poems, inkstones, and seal carving, and extends it to a new understanding and expression of nature. Most importantly, all works are closely related to the current context and real life, including such vivid scenes as playing mahjong. These works have both warm bloom and cold lingering, with profound cultural cultivation and rich vitality of contemporary art context, which is a ‘correspondence’ across time and space. Feeling life and then expressing it honestly, in the final analysis, is the eternal pursuit of simple mind, and the real ‘spiritual connection’ in the deep core.
Any art form is only a representation and carrier. Its inner essence is the cultivation and culture of the creator. How to express it is a kind of ability to trace the heart and a process of restraining introspection. It pushes every moment of life forward, all the time, never stopping. Bian Shaozhi has been pursuing such a vivid and pleasant ‘truth’. He starts from the pure way of looking at things, through exact and clear language, with painting as the origin, constantly weaving and extending its clues inward and outward, triggering infinite and broad images.