Linda Gallery is delighted to present “INSPIRATION” a new group exhibition featuring selected the latest works by five potential artist: Fan Jing, LiMan, Sun Yu, Wu Yuezhi and Zhou Yan. The theme of the exhibition comes from what Liang Qichao mentioned in his essay Yan Shi Pi Li Chun（Inspiration）: “…it comes from the moment when the thought and emotion reaches its peak…For a instant, it is just like sparkle and fire…the emergence of Yan Shi Pi Li Chun comes like wind and clouds that one could hardly catch.”

This word also corresponds to its explanation in the Cambridge dictionary: "a sudden good idea". Itsword root, "Inspire”, comes from the Latin word “īnspīrāre", which means "to breathe or to arrive suddenly at a place”. Those slight surprises which appear from the innermost soul, come from vanity where substance cannot reach, is flowing automatically like a breath. That is the unpredictable but irresistible inspiration in every artist’s mind.

In Fan Jing’s images, the strong and direct staged lighting effects, the absence of human facial feature details, and the sharp trains of the skirts, all deliberately use sculptural modelling method to deconstruct and simplify the structure of human body, to reduce the narrativity in painting and to avoid errors in understanding brought about by overly explicit picture directionality. What is highlighted is the duality and conflict brought about by the endlessly entangled "relationship" between people, events and objects.

Sun Yu's use of light, shade and anatomy ultimately returns to the childish and clumsy. He strips away the dynamics of living body, turning them into pure, longlasting objects and placing them in a fixed state. It seems that the air is taken away and the creature is placed as if it is still, becoming a fixed and constant "thing" in the vacuum, on which plants grow silently but accompanied by the subtle clamor of life. With the witty shape and thick but meticulous edge treatment, the picture is massiness but not heavy, and achieves a peaceful humor.

Also depicting everyday elements, Wu Yuezhi's Vanitas Cream series is inspired by "Vanitas", a genre of still-life painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the early 17th century. Looks into present life, in modern perception, buttercream itself carries a memorial symbolic in terms of years - continued marking on the timeline while never reversible. He fuses those two elements, purifying the religious divinity from the ordinary things and presenting it in form of buttercream, thus creating a dream world of nothingness and fragmentation brought about by the contrast between fantasy and reality in a prosperous era.

In Zhou Yan's works, flesh is tied with a bow and embedded in the frame, as if it has become a pulseless object; the headless tiny charactor, the burnt hand in the ashtray ...... with its smooth surface and composition make all these living objects deprived of perception and silent. The mutilations of other inanimate objects, however, are treated with blurred and irregular edges, making them hairy and unbalanced like living organisms, bringing a subtle and hidden pain. Flesh is a part of human body, which can be considered as an extension of human body's perception and thinking, while the loss of human's sense of pain is a passive closure leading to subjective and false numbness. Therefore, in the painting, Zhou Yan lets the picture grow freely, allowing the extension of self to flow on the canvas, grabbing the appearing details as the new main elements of next series. In this way, she can also use painting to discover the exit in the dilemma of thinking.

For Liman, like poetry and music, painting is a method to understand and elaborate in a more pure and spiritual way after he completely immerses himself in emotions and isolates himself from realistic objects. The description of his artwork "Meowing Incense" is: "The incense flattered in a cold jade stove, accompanying my feelings like water flow". For him, emotion is a gentle nutrient, just like a green plant planted on a river bank. it is in fact constantly subjected to the washing of sand, as well as gravel and the alternation of water streams under the surface of silence. In his gentle and delicate picture, the traces left by rough objects occasionally appears, as if the pain and undercurrents hidden in the warm mudflat.

The five artists have very different ways to create and present their artworks, while they all indulged in the first glimpse of inspiration without concealment. They distill their unique creative language，creating a silent resonance from their own experiences and introducing the viewers to their respective worlds with the most sincere tone. For artists, the key to the vitality of creation is to strengthen oneself and break through the shackles; for the viewer, every collision of thinking and cognitive battle hid in life belongs to our own "Inspiration ".