Poetics of Chunyang: Transgression and Invocation of a Tradition

Chinese American Arts Council/Gallery 456 is pleased to present Poetics of Chunyang: Transgression and Invocation of a Tradition, on view from June 13, 2025, through June 27, 2025.

Artist Statement

This exhibition features nearly thirty works created during my tenure as a visiting scholar at Harvard University (October 2024 – October 2025). While the use of mixed media reflects contemporary artistic methods common in the West, the subjects and aesthetics of the works are deeply rooted in Eastern traditions. My intent is to convey the poetic spirit and cultivated taste of Chinese culture—using modern materials to explore classical sensibilities and employing traditional brush-and-ink approaches to express contemporary vitality.

My academic training is in the intellectual history of Chinese thought, with familiarity in classical poetics and painting theory. Recent years have seen an abundance of research and publications on Song and Yuan dynasty painting, and I have also studied Chinese painting collections held in major museums around the world. How did the ancients paint? How did your predecessors understand their own artistic practices? These are questions that have long preoccupied me. By engaging painting through the lens of poetics and theory, I aim to closely read and interpret these works. It is as though I am borrowing the gaze of ancient literati to observe the world—landscapes, birds and flowers, morning and dusk, the shifting seasons—and through their vision, I come to a deeper understanding of the precious images that history has left. As the saying goes: “Read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles.”

I have loved painting since childhood. As an adult, I studied under several Chinese painters with strong foundations in brushwork and ink technique. At the same time, I have systematically researched the profound influence of twentieth-century Western modernism on Chinese art. My practice has developed over more than twenty years, evolving in tandem with my scholarly research into Chinese tradition and enriched by firsthand engagement with Western and Japanese artistic traditions. This raises a question: is it possible to use contemporary materials and visual language from the West and Japan to express a classical Chinese scholar’s vision of painting? I believe it is worth the attempt.

“Xieyi” (writing the idea) is a core term in Chinese painting, while “expression” is a key concept in Western art. For me, there is no clear boundary between the two. The spirit of art lies in inner resonance, not external classification. Creation does not begin with a concept—whether using traditional brush-and-ink or Western materials like tempera, oil, acrylic, or watercolor, what appears on the canvas is not just formal tension, but an authentic outpouring of emotion and lived experience.

The dynamic between “emptiness and fullness” is a fundamental duality in painting. Since ancient times, Chinese literati painting has embraced both the tangible and the intangible, reflecting a philosophical and cosmological worldview that remains profoundly relevant today. Contemporary painting is marked by multiplicity, but the modern expression of Chinese painting must draw sustenance from its own classical cultural roots. I therefore begin from a place of poetic sensibility—what the Tang dynasty artist Wang Wei described as “painting within poetry, poetry within painting”—to cultivate what I call a Poetic Spring aesthetic. Since the mid-Ming dynasty, Chinese classical painting has gradually lost its poetic core. A return to the spirit and integrity of the Song, Yuan, and Tang dynasties may offer a meaningful path for contemporary Chinese painting.

In today’s world, what you may lack most is wenxin (cultural heart) and wenmai (cultural lineage). Yet these are precisely the essence of the Chinese literati spirit. That vitality and subtle rhythm embody both the depth of traditional thought and a broad, sensitive responsiveness to life. Art does not speak through abstract concepts, but through form and image. The changing times bring both disruption and continuity—posing profound challenges but also offering opportunities for renewal.

Every generation of artists must reexamine tradition and forge a personal relationship with it—where inheritance and rebellion, submission and provocation, parody and critique, all coexist. Artistic creation is a venture into the unknown; and in an age increasingly shaped by AI technology, you must more cherish the sensitivities of art and nurture a mature, expansive sense of self.

About the Artists

Li-Chunyang is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Fine Arts, Chinese National Academy of Arts. She has held visiting scholar appointments at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture, Goethe University Frankfurt’s Department of Sinology, and Tama Art University’s Department of Nihonga (Japanese Painting) in Tokyo. She is a lifetime research fellow of the Li Keran Painting Academy and a member of the China Artists Association.

Her research interests include the intellectual history of Chinese thought, and Chinese culture and art in cross-linguistic contexts. She is also an active practitioner of oil painting and Chinese painting, with a focus on contemporary Chinese rhetoric and aesthetics.

Publications include:
• The Crisis of the Vernacular Movement (Winner of China National Academy of Arts’ Research Excellence Award; featured by Phoenix TV; published across Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; adopted as a key text in modern Chinese literature courses)
• Lu Xun: Beyond Left and Right (Sanlian Publishing House, Jan 2016)
• 100 Voices on the Vernacular (Serial publication in Social Sciences Forum, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2021–2025)
• Portraits in the Vernacular (Serialized in Ta Kung Pao, Hong Kong, 2024–2025)
• Returning to Roots and Language Transformation (Collected essays, forthcoming)
• Symmetry: The Paintings of Chunyang Li (Shandong Fine Arts Publishing House, Feb 2016)
• Annotation of Classic of Poetry: A Reinterpretation by Mu Xin (Guangxi Normal University Press, May 2018)

Selected Lectures on Art:
• Seeing Without Time: What Can Contemporary Painters Learn from Song-Yuan Painting? (Tama Art University, Tokyo, Sept 2016)
• Studying East and West: Ink Landscape Typologies and Possibilities (Tama Art University, Oct 2016)
• Cultural Psychology of Viewing Chinese and Western Art (Embassy of China in Germany, Sept 2019)
• Brush and Ink as a Discipline: Can It Resist Westernization? (China Artists Association Art Summit, Oct 2020)
• From Imagist Thinking to the Chinese Aesthetic Community (Oct 2023)
• Comparative Aesthetics and Imagist Thinking in Chinese and Western Art (Harvard University, Dept. of History of Art and Architecture, Dec 2024)

Selected Exhibitions:
• Abstract Landscapes: Li Chunyang Solo Exhibition (Ginza Fujiya Gallery, Tokyo, Aug 2016)
• Painting Spring: Landscapes and Sceneries by Li Chunyang (Tama Art University, Sept 2016)
• Double Solo Exhibition: Motoya Kiyokazu & Li Chunyang (China Cultural Center, Tokyo, Dec 2017)
• Springtime Landscapes: Art of Li Chunyang (Jindu Art Center, Beijing, Jan 2018)
• China Connect Berlin (Galerie Rohling, Berlin, Sept 2019)

Opening Reception: June 13, 2025, 6-8pm
Artist Talk: June 13, 2025, 7pm
Please contact info@caacarts.org for more information.

Gallery 456
Hours: M-F, 1-5PM and by appointment
Address: 456 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013, Elevator Accessible Contact: (212) 431-9740 | info@caacarts.org
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Chinese American Arts Council’s Gallery 456 Visual Arts Exhibition Series is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.