ESKENAZI EXHIBITS TEN NEW PAINTINGS BY CELEBRATED CONTEMPORARY INK MASTER, LIU DAN

Transfigured Echoes: Recent Paintings by Liu Dan
14 October to 14 November 2015

On view alongside Raphael's drawing of Saint Benedict receiving Maurus and Placidus


Redefining Pleats of Matter (left), painted as a response to Raphael’s Saint Benedict Receiving Maurus and Placidus (right).

Eskenazi is proud to present an exhibition of ten new paintings by Chinese contemporary master Liu Dan (b.1953), which will be on view at 10 Clifford Street, London, from 14 October to 14 November 2015. One of the most admired and accomplished Chinese contemporary artists, whose works have been exhibited recently at The British Museum (London), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and the Musée Guimet (Paris), Liu Dan is renowned for his pioneering abstract landscape compositions and depictions of scholars’ rocks executed through the masterful technique of ink painting.

The ten recent works to be shown at Eskenazi represent a new direction for the artist and are influenced by his fascination with Renaissance drawings and their intimate and uninhibited quality. The exhibition will include Raphael’s drawing of Saint Benedict Receiving Maurus and Placidus which inspired a leading, large-scale highlight of the show, Redefining Pleats of Matter (縐褶被重新確定) (200cm x 301cm) (both illustrated above).

The exhibition will open on the same day as Frieze London and Frieze Masters, and also run concurrently with the 18th Asian Art in London (5 to 14 November), the annual event that unites London’s Asian art dealers, major auction houses and societies in a series of selling exhibitions, auctions, receptions and seminars.

The ten works in the exhibition have taken four years to execute and include four abstract landscapes and six depictions of scholars’ rocks, small and highly valued stones appreciated by Chinese scholars, officials and connoisseurs for over 1,000 years. A driving inspiration for the works to be shown at Eskenazi is Liu Dan’s long-held passion for drawings, and their exploratory and provisional character. In Ancient China, artists made drawings – called fen ben – as preparation for their paintings. However, it is European drawings of the Renaissance that most fascinate Liu Dan. The germ of an idea for the present exhibition comes from a remark he made about Leonardo: ‘I would sometime like to take Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’’,he once said, ‘and transform its rhythms into a landscape.’ As a continuation of this theme, Liu Dan has executed a contemporary landscape painted as a response to Raphael’s Saint Benedict Receiving Maurus and Placidus, a remarkable, early drawing by the Renaissance master which was executed in 1503 and which is also included on loan in the exhibition.

The works in the exhibition showcase the artist’s exceptional skill in the traditional school of ink painting, long regarded as the highest form of Chinese art, as well as his unique approach towards it, described in the catalogue introduction by Professor Ackbar Abbas as ‘devoted irreverence’. The artist does not seek to conserve artistic traditions; he seeks to push the practice of tradition to such an extreme that it becomes something else. When asked about the difference between the Old Masters and himself, Liu Dan said: ‘I don’t think there is any difference except that they are dead and I am still alive. On the other hand, because I’m still alive, they are alive too. I don’t advocate the literati ideology, but I endorse the literati spirit. I don’t belong to a particular tradition either. I just want to keep up the artistic tradition where freedom is unrestrained.’

Liu Dan was born in 1953 in Najing, China. From a young age he studied Confucian classics, poetry and calligraphy with his grandfather, later studying traditional painting under Ya Ming at the Jiangsu Academy of Chinese Painting, Hangzhou. He moved to Hawaii in 1981 and spent the next 25 years in the United States, including 14 years in New York. He returned to China in 2006 and lives and works in Beijing. His years of study in China and his time in the west combined to influence his unique and personal style. His works can be found in a number of prestigious public collections including The Andrew Mellon Foundation, New York; The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The British Museum, London; Musée Guimet, Paris; and The San Diego Museum of Art. In 2008, at the invitation of architect I.M. Pei, Liu Dan designed the rock sculpture garden for the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC.

The introduction for the exhibition catalogue is written by Professor Ackbar Abbas, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and former chair of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures. A leading expert in the fields of globalisation, Chinese culture and critical theory, he is widely published on these subjects and his books include Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (1997),Internationalizing Cultural Studies (co-edited with John Erni, 2005), and Chen Danqing: Painting After Tiananmen (1995).

Eskenazi Ltd is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading galleries for Oriental works of art and its exhibitions are always eagerly awaited for the rarity and beauty of the objects offered. The family business was founded in Milan in 1923 and the Eskenazi name has since become synonymous with expertise in this area. Giuseppe Eskenazi, who has been head of the business for over fifty years, has an unrivalled reputation for his knowledge and love of the subject and clients have included over eighty of the world’s major museums as well as private collectors. Visit www.eskenazi.co.uk for further details.

Location: Eskenazi Ltd, 10 Clifford Street, London W1S 2LJ

 

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