EGG Gallery【Forthcoming exhibitions】-《Walking Lines》

“I hope to perceive the rhythm of personal life with the lines in the finger painting. This is a work digging into the unknown. I don’t know its extension and depth, I can only enjoy the process, which is enough for me as I am more inclined and curious to pursue the essence of the inner self than the objects of nature.

The path of creation has developed from haziness to clarity: each surface is an energy field of different nature, transforming, changing, and talking. Reality and emptiness, space and atmosphere, life and death: they are separated from the influence of the details of object appearance and go to the depths of the spirit. It is difficult to describe what it is but it has its existence independently like every note in a piece of music”. 

- Zhu Lan

EGG Gallery is proud to announce that during this year's Beijing Gallery Week it will present artist Zhu Lan's solo exhibition "Walking Lines". This exhibition will introduce the artist's new works in recent years. Exhibition dates: June 24, 2022 to August 21, 2022.

When looking at Zhu Lan's works, aside from the fascination of the paintings themselves, the viewers are able to feel the process of creation and unlock the intricate knots in their hearts. These are pictures that run through the artist's life: every hour, every minute, slowly moving as the ink and lines stretch out.

"Silent" series  44x80cm  Ink on paper  2022

"Silent" series  44x80cm  Ink on paper  2022

"Silent" series  44x80cm  Ink on paper  2022

"Silent" series  44x80cm  Ink on paper  2022

The "Silent" series offers a kind of empathy and reflection on the situation of life, where there are tenacity, helplessness, loss, hope, struggle, fearlessness, confrontation, clarity, gratitude, all intertwined with experience of life. What can it be more precious than life?

"People" series 6  68x112cm  Ink on paper  2020

"People" series 9  68x112cm  Ink on paper  2020

Throughout the "People" series, the lines of the human body are reminiscent of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele: lines are a painting technique that can best represent the characters of people. But lines alone are not enough to create a complete imaginative space for the beholder. The artist clusters larger swathes of ink, abstracts black color blocks and lines, and makes the picture fuller and three-dimensional. People are the carrier of the "human" series, but after the artist's abstraction and subconscious depiction, when the work is displayed in front of people, what the beholders see is not the real self, but another dimension, a new interpretation of the concept of "people".

"Echo" 184x288cm  Ink on paper  2021

In the relatively simple picture of "Echo" there is a full sense of competition and conflict between the strong and the weak due to the sharp contrast between the ink color zones and the lines, hardness and slenderness. This kind of strength and weakness may come from the insignificance of human beings confronted against the grandeur of natural power, or from the different metaphorical gender and cultural expressions between femininity and masculinity, or between restraint and assertiveness, or just the simple visual conflict between objects of different textures. "Painting does not require explanation. The channel of painting is based on visual perception. It only needs to follow the memory of the current feeling."

"Stone" 184x288cm  Ink on paper  2021

In "Stone", the visual sense of jumping and movement extends from the compositional lines of a vaguely recognizable insect in the lower right corner and the instability of the branches with its habitat... all the way to the main body of the picture. It is in the unbalanced relationship between the rather specific and quantitative "clumps" and the slender and smooth lines. Because of these, the picture conveys a lively atmosphere. As for whether there are flowers, trees, etc. in it, it is precisely the artist who left the beholders more self-space between the similarities and the dissimilarities. Stone should be heavy, but in the artist’s work suddenly becomes light. In this work there is a surprising sense of contrast. Brittle and short ink strokes outline the burst of new life, but the explosion and the rupture do not hide the beauty of the frailty.

"Life" 184x288cm  Ink on paper  2017

"Far-reaching" 184x288cm  Ink on paper  2017

"Life" is like being in the forest, surrounded by the rustling sound of the wind, which is longer than any music, atonal, and broad. The light of the setting sun scatters on the tree trunk, and the birds walk through it. All the artificial things are so far-fetched, which restricts the extension of those natural things. If we try to describe the nature, it will definitely be incomparable to itself. A rigid body that breathes. This is the reason why the artist no longer seeks similarities in appearance. What he has to do is to use his own soul to embrace the inner soul that affects the outside world, and listen to it. That is a grace that can only be experienced by oneself. Every life has silent energy. For artists, picture is the most appropriate language.

About artist 

Zhu Lan was born in 1962 to a family of painters. From 1979 to 1983,she studied traditional Chinese painting at the Department of Arts of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art. She then pursued her postgraduate studies in Italian fresco painting at the Kyoto City University of Arts from 1988 to 1990. She currently works as a professional artist, dividing her time between Beijing and Canada.Her works have been acquired by institutions such as the University of Washington,Energy Northwest,General Electric UK, the Charlottetown Confederation Centre of the Arts (CA), Truman State University, CW Bank (Vienna, AU),Banque de France, the National Art Museum of China(NAMOC) and the Guangdong Museum of Art.

EGG Gallery has been founded since 2008. It enjoys a strong international background, and focuses on studying and exploring Chinese contemporary art. In terms of choosing artists and art-works, EGG Gallery emphasizes artists’ personal qualities, as well as their works’ academic strengths and characteristics. Every year, EGG Gallery participates in 3-4 art fairs, either abroad or in China, and organizes at least 6 solo or group exhibitions. In this way, EGG Gallery manages to exhibit high quality art works, and shape its unique aesthetic perspective.