Linda Gallery is pleased to announce "Virtual Focus" a solo exhibiton of Zhu Wei (b.1966)who is a contemporary ink artist. That will be open in Much 22th. The ink works in this exhibition are Zhu Wei's classics of the current Chinese status with the most traditional Chinese painting techniques and traditional media. From the 1990s to the present, Zhu Wei has created works such as "Beijing Story" series, "China Diary" series, "Utopia Series" series and "Vernal Equinox" series. Since he started drawing ink and wash painting and all materials and techniques come from tradition and are closely related with tradition. Zhu Wei never left tradition yet what he depicted are pcontemporary subjects. It's made his exploration especially significant in the progress of Chinese contemporary art pursuing after "Re-Sinofication".

We could easily read the contemporary features in Zhu Wei's artworks if we simply adopt the approaches of iconography and sociology. Because it's obvious that his works are well related with contemporary life and this could be clearly seen in many series like "The Story of Beijing" series, "Sweet Life" series, "The Utopia" series and "China Diary" series. However, such an interpretation will simplify the works of Zhu Wei to be fairly some common conceptual contents, or will describe them to be one and another symbolic fable. In fact, artistic forms, including composition, modeling, brush work and coloring, are comparatively independent systems which have both their origin and history. It's forming up and development depend more upon their internal structure and self-improving rules. If an artist skips to create new approaches or rules before he could enter the existing ones, then it's impossible for him to be written into the history. Therefore, in the history of art, even those most creative artists cannot but choose patterns and conventions in tradition to be their starting point of certain stages, then change and re-construct them according to needs. There is no other way out.To understand Zhu Wei's art is to start from his artwork itself, then analyze and study how the contemporary life and certain concepts influenced his adoption and creation in form. French historian of art Henri Focillon proposed the principle of "technique is the most important" in his The Life of Forms in Art.Take his "Beijing Story, Colorful Sketch, No.2" painted in 1991 as an example, though he maintained the approach in using processed rice paper with ancient sense as the grounding of painting, yet he turned to refer to traditional imperial court (refined) painting in creation, which also became his later main way to go. As we see, in this painting depicting the plot of Peking Repartee, he not only made meaningful deformation to figures, but also used the small surface of Cubism in his background. It's precious that he made a wonderful integration of the two.