MANGROVEGALLERY 红树林画廊

The Exhibition of “Enzo Cucchi and Liang Quan” opened at MANGROVEGALLERY on July 25, 2020. The exhibition presents representative paintings by both artists and will continue til October 10, 2020.

Enzo Cucchi is one of the most important contemporary artists in Italy. The New York Times once described Cucchi as an “artist who waves his paintbrush like a magician’s wand.” “Strimpelli Sabatali” is Cucchi’s latest series created in 2019. His brush becomes the baton, lightly tapping out melodies on paper. Multiple paintings are simultaneously created, with collage combinations forming an unbounded act centered around the artist.

Symbols such as animals and humans always appear in unusual ways in Cucchi’s paintings: animals squatting inside houses, eyeballs falling at doorways, cats with glowing eyes hovering above the sea, children holding large alarm clocks with one hand. Animals are endowed with divinity, humans blindfolded, and objects rearranged on Cucchi’s canvas, revealing a sense of mystery within the disorder.

Liang Quan (b. 1948, Shanghai, China) is one of the most representative figures in abstract painting in China. He graduated from the Affiliated High School of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, and went to study at the Academy of Art College (now the Academy of Art University) in San Francisco. Liang taught at the printmaking department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art). Liang Quan is one of the earliest artists who combine traditional ink wash painting with abstract painting, creating a personal style that bridges — while accentuates — the differences between the Eastern and Western aesthetics. The application of both fine-brush and free stroke painting fills the canvas with minute details, forming an elaborate scheme that represents things and, ultimately, the emptiness of things.

Liang Quan’s artistic practice transitions from early heavy-colored expressions to the incorporation of tea stains into his paintings, utilizing Xuan paper by tearing, dyeing, and collaging. Amidst complexity and simplicity, Liang Quan develops his personal artistic language through the repetition of collage. His “non-action” attitude allows the paper to unfold naturally within the order established by the artist, in harmony with his own logic. Liang infuses his works with a philosophy of serene and unrestrained life.