Dong Qichang
Since 2002, Shang Yang has attempted to collage and print mechanically-reproduced images on his already-mature “the Great Landscape”. Shang Yang: the Dong Qichang Project explores the idea that the aggressive intervention of contemporary culture has fragmented and flattened the solid traditional Chinese logic of self-sufficiency, harmony and unity. This exhibition marks Shang Yang's first solo show within more than five decades of art production; it promises to deliver a comprehensive display of his impressive skill and conceptual development presenting in his latest artworks. His self-imposed mission to “contribute to modernism” in the pursuit of art has had wide practical significance to the development of Chinese contemporary art. His “Dong Qichang Project” is a summarization of his “Big Scenery Series”. Since 2003, Shang has continuously worked on this subject to remind us of our interdependent relationship with the nature. Dong Qichang was a great painter in Ming Dynasty, who had great influence on painters with his excellent landscape paintings and his theories of painting. Therefore, Shang borrows patterns from Dong to create his own works. Scenery here becomes artificial, far from the depiction of some real things. Shang creates paintings symbols which combine time elements and historical elements. He is closely related to the tradition of Chinese landscape paintings and is trying to develop this tradition in a modern form. Dong Qichang was a painter, calligrapher and an experienced art critic during the Ming dynasty.