• 

Ji Dachun

Bird Painting without Bird

Synthese aus chinesischer Tradition und westlicher Moderne

China is undergoing rapid economic and sociocultural transformation. Between the euphoria of unchecked economic advancement, frenzied modernization, and the concomitant fear that the country’s identity will be lost, art charts new and individual paths.

Ji Dachun (b. Nantong, China, 1968; lives and works in Beijing) has found a distinctive visual language in his bizarre scenarios. They contain clear references to shan shui, the classical Chinese landscape painting, but also articulate the artist’s engagement with Western modernism and the contemporary painting of Philip Guston, Cy Twombly, Georg Baselitz, and others. By showing traditional subjects while breaking with the conventions of central perspective, the pictures of Ji Dachun, who studied painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, open up space for spiritual contemplation and the inward imagination.

With an essay by Uta Grosenick, editor of two surveys of Chinese contemporary art as well as monographs on Miao Xiaochun, Yang Shaobin, and Zeng Fanzhi.