December 8th Jingxiang Chat | Shi Zhiying: Between Matter and Self
Event Details
Time: December 8, 2024, 15:00-16:30
Location: Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum Store
Shi Zhiying says, "For me, no matter what I paint, it's all about resolving my understanding of painting itself."
In recent years, Shi Zhiying has begun to draw inspiration from grotto sculptures and murals to continue her painting practice. She prefers relief sculptures, which exist between two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional sculptures, both flat and volumetric. Shi Zhiying is very interested in this liminal form between two and three dimensions and attempts to represent it through painting.
The critical state is a degree of chaos, uncertainty, and the starting point for the emergence of various possibilities. The depth and light and shadow effects naturally formed by the undulations of relief sculptures are, in flat painting, expressed through form and color. This transformation between two and three dimensions is also a kind of distillation for Shi Zhiying and inspires her to find relationships and rhythms between forms and colors.
Between three dimensions and two dimensions, between light and heavy, and between matter and self, Shi Zhiying continually approaches the truth of art.
This chat will be a relaxed discussion about grotto art imagination, led by Jingxiang Dunhuang exhibition artist Shi Zhiying, her friend Zhu Lin, the editor-in-chief of artnow, and curator Xu Huanzhi, using the light topic of travel to open up.
During the chat, Shi Zhiying will share her travel observations, expand on her creations, and discuss her explorations between matter and self.
Guests
Shi Zhiying
Shi Zhiying, born in 1979 in Shanghai, China, currently works and lives in Shanghai. She obtained her master's degree from the Oil Painting Department of the Shanghai University College of Fine Arts in 2005. Shi Zhiying is known for her extended scenes with near-monochromatic touches, such as seas, sands, grasses, etc. She attempts to express the state of existence of things through the language of painting. In Shi Zhiying's painting practice, the mutual transformation of "emergence" and "disappearance" is particularly emphasized: the texture and volume of water bodies, rocks, containers, Buddha statues, and beads are presented through painterly brushstrokes, yet the shapes of the objects are not solid but conveyed through independently established lines, brushstrokes, and pigments that communicate an internal breath and rhythm logic, establishing a perceptual yet stable structure in interaction with visual experience. The artist reflects the transience brought by the generation and dissolution of things with her smooth and observant paintings, capturing the extremely slow but continuous transformations occurring between things, the painting plane, and the perception of states.
Xu Huanzhi
Xu Huanzhi, born in Nanjing and raised in Shanghai, holds a Bachelor of Arts from Shanghai Normal University and a Master of Journalism and Communication from the University of New South Wales. He has worked at Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, participating in the coordination of the "West Heavens and Middle Earth" China-India cultural exchange project and the establishment of the contemporary gathering space plan "Elegant Gathering Garden." During his tenure, he was involved in the planning and execution of several international academic forums and exhibition projects. His recent curatorial practices include: Jingxiang Dunhuang (Dunhuang Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, 2024); Westward: From Shanghai to Songjiang, Then to the Jiangnan Region (Yunjian Hall Cultural and Art Center, Shanghai, 2023), etc.
Zhu Lin
Zhu Lin holds a bachelor's degree from the School of Foreign Languages at Fudan University, a graduate degree in Cinema Studies from New York University (NYU), and a graduate degree in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. Before becoming an artist, she accumulated extensive writing and editing experience in the media industry, working for magazines such as ELLE, South China Morning Post, Noblesse, and artnow, and currently serves as the editor-in-chief of art media artnow and the content director of lifestyle media Noblesse.