| Comprehensive survey of the latest trends in Chinese landscape painting

| Shanshui—the emotional space of the landscape is rediscovered as a medium for individual artistic expression

Shanshui, the Chinese word for landscape, is a compound of the two symbols for mountain and water, indispensable elements of historical shanshui painting. Its significance lies more in its transformational potential for connecting the individual to the world than in the accurate rendering of a particular landscape. Even in contemporary art in China, which is dominated by the human figure and supposedly liberated from the burden of tradition, there are more or less obvious elements of traditional mountain-water painting, which is deeply rooted in the nation’s culture.

This publication was conceived in collaboration with Ai Weiwei—probably China’s best-known contemporary artist—and it strikes an arc from selected historical shanshui paintings to important protagonists of contemporary Chinese art. The volume groups the works according to specific characteristics, such as the manipulation of traditional source materials and philosophical concepts, experiments with new media, or photography as a mode of expression essentially related to the “one brushstroke” propagated by Shi Tao, the seventeenth-century Chinese master.

Exhibition schedule: Museum of Art Lucerne, May 22–October 2, 2011