Lin Chunyan : Second Spring
26 Sep - 2 Nov 2019
Guest Curator: Dr Geoff Raby AO
Curator's words
Lin has been a prominent figure in the Beijing contemporary art scene for the past thirty years, but his relentlessly honest and individually expressive work has defied catagorization. He has stood apart from the main movements of the Beijing art scene. Refusing to be influenced by fashions of the day, he has continued to explore a highly personal emotional world through his painting.
A recurring feature of his work has been ethereal, transcendental, figures floating across his canvasses. It is the artist’s spirit in its expressiveness, set free to soar, ascend, fall in imaginary landscapes of rich texture and gorgeous colour. It is also the human spirit which gives life to the natural world as it is observed and recorded by the artist – the unity of the subject and observer.
Lin has long been captivated by the intrinsic beauty of the natural world. His works are not realist, naturalist, depictions, although they are intricate compositions, but rather like the best of portraiture, he draws out a deeper essence. It is as if Lin is seeing beyond the surface of his flowers, plants, trees into another dimension of their beauty. Lin is also a master technician. He uses heavy thick paint, often bulked up with bees-wax, to create dense textured surfaces. These he employs with an uncanny eye for three dimensional perspective. With his big canvasses, the further one is from the surface the more one seems to enter into the picture itself. Yet he also employs this same skill in his smaller pieces. The pure floral pieces in this exhibition, for example, present a powerful and engaging three-dimensional perspective which draws the observer deeper into the subject.
Lin is also a master conjurer with colour. All the pieces in this exhibition are rich in colour, as well as texture, as the artist uses innovative colourto introduce the viewer into realms of nature and beauty that are uplifting and joyous.
Lin’s body of work over the past thirty years has moved through many stages of development and conceptual expression. From bleak urban settings in his early years as an angst-filled young man determined to make a life as an artist, to his rendezvous in Australia with nature and natural images full of warm light and brightness, to his return to Beijing and the wintery brittle landscapes of Songzhuang as he sought to re-establish himself in China, and now to these spring and summer works in this exhibition full of light, colourand hope.
In this exhibition, Second Spring, Lin reveals nature and the human spirit in a way we have not experienced it before.
Dr Geoff Raby AO
A recurring feature of his work has been ethereal, transcendental, figures floating across his canvasses. It is the artist’s spirit in its expressiveness, set free to soar, ascend, fall in imaginary landscapes of rich texture and gorgeous colour. It is also the human spirit which gives life to the natural world as it is observed and recorded by the artist – the unity of the subject and observer.
Lin has long been captivated by the intrinsic beauty of the natural world. His works are not realist, naturalist, depictions, although they are intricate compositions, but rather like the best of portraiture, he draws out a deeper essence. It is as if Lin is seeing beyond the surface of his flowers, plants, trees into another dimension of their beauty. Lin is also a master technician. He uses heavy thick paint, often bulked up with bees-wax, to create dense textured surfaces. These he employs with an uncanny eye for three dimensional perspective. With his big canvasses, the further one is from the surface the more one seems to enter into the picture itself. Yet he also employs this same skill in his smaller pieces. The pure floral pieces in this exhibition, for example, present a powerful and engaging three-dimensional perspective which draws the observer deeper into the subject.
Lin is also a master conjurer with colour. All the pieces in this exhibition are rich in colour, as well as texture, as the artist uses innovative colourto introduce the viewer into realms of nature and beauty that are uplifting and joyous.
Lin’s body of work over the past thirty years has moved through many stages of development and conceptual expression. From bleak urban settings in his early years as an angst-filled young man determined to make a life as an artist, to his rendezvous in Australia with nature and natural images full of warm light and brightness, to his return to Beijing and the wintery brittle landscapes of Songzhuang as he sought to re-establish himself in China, and now to these spring and summer works in this exhibition full of light, colourand hope.
In this exhibition, Second Spring, Lin reveals nature and the human spirit in a way we have not experienced it before.
Dr Geoff Raby AO
