Line Image/Luo Ying

 

I wanted to share a few  new things I have learned about traditional chinese painting after going to see my friend Luo Ying’s exhibition .

 

 

Luo Ying is an Irish Wave artist and is currently showing both painting and ceramic work at the historic venue of Prince Kung Mansions.

 

 

 

I wanted to share a few new things I learned after going to see Luo Yings show.  At a glance you can tell her work introduces the line image of traditional Chinese culture into the contemporary context. But is there more to it?

 

In traditional chinese paintings there are eighteen different line drawing styles based on the experiences of the ancient artists. This formed a basic expression system for traditional Chinese painting.

 

 

 

After the traditional eighteen lines , Professor Tong Yujie ( X’ian ) suggests Luo Ying’s broad Cyber line offers a new plane “the nineteenth line”. The traditional lines are embedded with a cultural self consciousness, coming from the use of human emotion alongside traditions of skill such as the tensions that are released from the body and the arm into the control of the brush.

 

 

This traditional view of expression is an important part of the intention to represent an inner form, a structure and quality of the objects and so does not intend to show the exact appearance of objects.

 

 

The broad line breaks up the delicacy of traditional chinese painting.

 

 

This destructuring of traditional Gung-bi may also be the structuring of contemporary Gung-bi art.

I believe this hard thick cyber line is also trying to weave it’s way into this expression of the inner state of objects. Perhaps modernity is not all surface as it is often viewed, particularly in Chinese culture, (where the old and ancient is always internal and the new and recent is external). Perhaps there is some kind of new consciousness so many various technologies such as cyber simulation, the stories of neuroscience imaging  and many more are all shifting and sliding their way into expressing the inner state.

The exhibition continues on show in the Prince Kung’s mansion near (Qianhai west ) until Tuesday 9^th December.