The Hong Ling oil painting exhibition ‘Ying Ning’, jointly held by Aurora Art Center and Soka Art, will open at Aurora Art Center in Shanghai on November 9, 2024. The exhibition lasts until December 8, 2024. This is a large-scale solo exhibition held by artist Hong Ling again after eight years. It will show Hong Ling’s latest painting ideas and extensions. Wu Hongliang, the current director of Beijing Painting Academy, is specially invited as the curator, and Peng Feng, the dean of the School of Art of Peking University, is the academic host. The exhibition title ‘Born from Ying Ning’ is quoted from ‘Zhuangzi – Inner Chapters – The Great Master Chapter VI’. It is written in the text, ‘Those who kill life do not die, and those who give life do not live. As for things, there is nothing that they do not lead, nothing that they do not welcome; nothing that they do not destroy, and nothing that they do not complete. Its name is Ying Ning. Ying Ning is something that is completed after being disturbed.’ The ‘Ying Ning’ expounded by Zhuangzi is to maintain inner peace and tranquility in the hustle and bustle of all things in the outside world and reach a spiritual state of detachment. In Hong Ling’s more than forty years of artistic practice, natural philosophical thought has always run through it. He secluded himself in Huangshan and experienced its ups and downs over the years. Standing between the clear radiance with the momentum of ‘taking off clothes and being unrestrained’, he examines all things and transforms the form of the earth’s spiritual energy into paintings. This not only shows the painting techniques of simplicity and complexity control and the aesthetic concept of the combination of emptiness and reality in Chinese landscape paintings, but also allows the aesthetic subject to be in harmony with nature in the pursuit of no desire and inaction and reach the state of forgetting both self and things. Zhuangzi believes that all things in the world ultimately return to the same, and there is no difference between life and death. When things are born by themselves, they are gradually moving towards death. On the contrary, extinction is the beginning of life. This concept of ‘equating life and death’ is also reflected in Hong Ling’s creations. As spring goes and autumn comes, years pass by. The artist captures the rhythm and poetic charm of nature, beautifies the Tao with forms, and witnesses the cycle of life between heaven and earth with his painting ideas. In the paintings, the overlapping layers of lofty mountains blur the boundaries between each other, and the spatial concept becomes hazy; the brook flowing through the dense forest is shining but cannot hold back time, and the waxing and waning of the heavenly way always follows it; the cold morning snow clouds do not freeze the mountains because the warm jade gives off smoke, implying that spring is about to come. Hong Ling freely wields his brush and ink in the vast expanse, getting rid of the delusions that are easily disturbed by the mortal world and returning to the original. It is as if all things have neither birth nor death, neither ancient nor present.
The opening hours are from November 9 to December 8. The specific business status is subject to the opening situation on that day.Related posts:
Suzhou: Drama ‘Seeking Her Trace – Eileen Chang’
Shanghai ‘Reunion II’ Musical Star Concert
Ningbo Meland Club (China Overseas Huanyu City Store)
Beijing Performance: Russian State Ballet Theatre – New Edition of Swan Lake in 2025
Meng Jinghui’s Classic Rock Musical ‘The Murder in the Hanging Garden’ in Beijing
Shanghai Theatre Performance: ‘Dream of Dreams’
