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Zhao Gang: Shanshui Poetry features a series of new paintings that represent the artist’s life long obsession of the intertwining narratives of literati lifestyle, landscape, psychological paths of the past and present. As a seminal genre in classical Chinese literature, Shanshui poetry first appeared in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, flourished during the Wei, Jin, reached its zenith in the Tang, and attained further philosophical and aesthetic refinement in the Song. Shaped by the interplay of social transformation and literary thought, generations of literati turned to mountains and rivers as vehicles of feeling, seeking spiritual solace and transcendence in the purity and remoteness of nature.
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In Zhao’s recent works, he revisits this lineage, transforming observations and recollections of his surroundings into rhythmic meditations of the mind. Since leaving China in 1983 to study in the Netherlands, then at Vassar College in the United States, Zhao has lived between cultures for decades. After more than twenty years in New York, he returned to Beijing on the eve of the Olympic Games. Washes of colour echo sentiments shaped by migration, displacement, and the passage of time.
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“Though the shifting landscapes may differ, the cherished remains the same.” Elderly boatmen adrift on bamboo rafts, mountain ridges dissolving into cloud, the shimmer of lakes, the resonance of bells mingling with snow — through such images, Zhao charts the shifting cycles of the seasons and the subtle metamorphoses of day and night. Within these motifs, he continues to probe the intricate, often fraught entanglements of self-identification, cultural encounter, and historical rupture.