2023.3.18 - 2023.4.23
Venue: D06, Middle 2nd St., 798 Art Zone, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, BJ
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Tong Gallery+Projects is honored to announce that the solo exhibition of artist MO BAI Echoing Birds will be open from March 18th, 2023 to April 23th, 2023, during which the artist's latest paintings will be presented. Look forward to seeing you there!
Echoing Birds
by Mr. Lanshan
Mobai's paintings have at least three clues for us to appreciate - Shanshui paintings, landscape paintings and portrait d’intérieur. This explains the artist's triple experience. As a teenager, she entered the China Academy of Art to study Chinese painting, and as an adult, she traveled around the world and co-founded a new Chinese-style home furnishing brand. The title of the exhibition is "Echoing Birds", but there is no bird in the painting but a bird's interest and charm. It can be said that there are birds outside the painting or the bird's song should be echoing in the hearts of the audience. Landscapes and flowers and birds are the eternal themes of Chinese painting. The former is the natural scenery, while the latter is the life of nature. The two express feelings and meaning. Together they constitute the process of oriental beauty, which is displayed in Mobai's design, brush and expression.
In ancient China, Shanshui painting and flower-and-bird painting were both formed in the Tang Dynasty (the theme appeared as the theme of the painting), which shows that these two types of painting materials share similar experiences: during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there were many cultural exchanges at home and abroad. And art, at the same time, benefiting from the literati's spiritual needs for material space, the carrier of painting has also been enriched, explaining the function of cross-cultural communication in the direction of art. Western landscape painting and Shanshui landscape painting have different ideas, that is, "imitation of nature(1)" and “to express nature(2)”. These two methods bring different spatial feelings.
Space is the key perspective for understanding the third clue. The process of art can be regarded as the process of spatial evolution to some extent. Both Eastern and Western paintings have experienced the process of turning from independent pottery to indoors(3) , so far, painting has become an integral part of the space and the visual center, has a relatively fixed viewing position, and also undertakes a more important cultural mission—whether in terms of social economy, spiritual construction, or the simplest daily aesthetic needs. Therefore, when we appreciate paintings indoors, we cannot separate the picture from the surrounding space, and it also makes the viewing of paintings turn to the experience of space.
The evolution of painting history has come all the way. Mobai still expresses her passion with brush and ink, pretending to be in the mountains and forests. It is worth noting that she has adopted a comprehensive practice method to manage the space of her works. First of all, in the painting, Mobai emphasizes the natural things as the subject, but does not emphasize expressing the sense of space, such as Pingyuan in Chinese paintings, or one-point perspective in Western paintings, which are rarely expressed. This technique can be seen in murals in Shaanxi in the Tang Dynasty, Post-Impressionists, or contemporary painters such as Zhang Enli. The creation of space atmosphere focuses on the frame outside the picture but still a part of the painting. These picture frames have been carefully designed, and even transformed into the base plate itself attached by the paint, so that the work presents multiple spaces on different planes: there are walls, picture frames, pictures on the material level and the space where the audience is. At the same time, a space composed of inner observation at the level of artistic conception, metaphors outside the window, and sounds outside the painting.
The design of the exhibition site and the picture frame, as the transmission of the artist's consciousness, intentionally echoed. On the one hand, the inspiration comes from the origin of the picture frame - medieval manuscript painters drew the architectural design elements of the church as a frame on the book. On the other hand, it comes from the reflection on the white space popular in the painting exhibition of modern art museums - how painting returns to everyday life, becoming a channel linking contemporary audiences with bird responses outside the window.
1 The 15th century Florentine painter Alberti proposed "imitation of nature" in "On Painting", which also constitutes the basis of European classical painting theory. This reproduction of nature The basic form of the painting has not changed significantly until the end of the 19th century. This perspective of understanding emphasizes the one-dimensional understanding starting from the viewer. Because it does not emphasize the expression of pictorial themes through natural scenery, landscape painting has always existed as a secondary painting before the 19th century.
2 Chinese landscapes do not emphasize similarity in shape, that is, imitation, but emphasize the expression of charm or artistic conception, and the revelation of things to achieve the resonance between man and nature. For example, in Su Shi's "Net Cause It is mentioned in "Paintings of the Courtyard" that "mountains, bamboos, trees, water, waves, smoke and clouds, although impermanent, have common sense."
3 Such as Crete to painted pottery, Yangshao painted pottery depicting images of flowers, birds and plants, and Western During the Greco-Roman period, the East turned to indoor murals during the Qin and Han dynasties, such as Pompeii frescoes or Han stone reliefs
