Time is wordless and formless, but art allows us to see its contours and textures. The artists' creation in time is also a reading and visual interpretation of time. Time is a theme, and also a material that can intervene in the work and shape the painting. It is the superposition and accumulation of the creative process, and also the final presentation of accumulation. In the artists’ dialogue with history, in the excavation of the meaning of daily life, and in the generation of the future, whispers of time are gradually deciphered...
For artist Mou Huan, "Time is perhaps the only real thing on this planet." This real time exists in Max Huckle's framing of moments with unconscious lines, in Zhang Jian-jun's rubbing of the universe, and in Liu Zhengyong's capturing of life's emotions.
With regard to time, everyone seems to have their own way of exploring, translating and expressing it. The sculptures of Zhang Ning and Shiau Jon Jen open up a space that connects the past with the present, the ephemeral with the eternal.
In the space of art, Qin Feng, Lin Yan, and Zhang Fangbai continue the contemporary dialogue with history and civilisation; Hu Shunxiang and Martin Wehmer are embracing the tradition of painting to open up the future of their personal creative language; Zhao Yiqian preserves the traces of ordinary time left on the surface of the objects, while Li Qunli and Sui Changjiang look at the daily life in a different light; Chen Kai and Brad Brown are exploring a purposelessness in their works, while Huang Liyan and Yan Bo are trying to touch the eternity of human spirit outside the frame of painting.
The 18 artists featured in this exhibition have different backgrounds, styles, mediums and expressions of time, but that is precisely why we are able to get a glimpse of the richness of time and its contours in the space of Leo Gallery.
