Nan Qi: Borrowed Landscapes

Alisan Fine Arts is proud to present our first solo exhibition for the Chinese ink painter Nan Qi, famed for his three-dimensional images comprised of his eponymous "Nan Qi dots" and interpretations of Chinese cultural icons, including female soldiers, the five-pointed red star, and multi-national bills. For this particular exhibition he is presenting a new series of Chinese landscape paintings. Deriving inspiration from ancient masters including Guo Xi from the Song Dynasty and Huang Gongwang from the Yuan Dynasty, Nan Qi has contemporised the historical landscapes with the use of his 3-D dots, resulting in a monochrome, hazy vista that is at once both challenging and edgy. Included in this exhibition are also his singular "halo" dots, iconoclastic images of renminbi notes, as well as his emoji series, previously exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong (AFA, 2017), which experiments with the elevation of the digitally traded emoji into formal painting, playing with symbols of communication and their context. Born in Yongkang, Zhejiang in 1960, Nan Qi was trained in classical landscape ink painting at the People’s Liberation Army Fine Arts Academy in Beijing. He is a member of Chinese Artists’ Association, and currently lives in Beijing.

Artist's Statement:
I believe that contemporary ink paintings, within the context of ink, have unlimited possibilities for expansion and extension. I have researched ink painting for decades, and have synthesised the methods of ink accumulation and ink staining into a technique I call "halo dots." In this exhibition, I bring my "halo dots" from the past to the present, giving them a new life in today's contemporary environment and allowing the viewer a re-reading of classic tradition.