Reviews: Art

Innovative artist

Zhong Ruqian, a veteran experimental ink artist from Central China's Hubei Province, is holding his one-man exhibition entitled Trace, Image, Realm at the National Art Museum of China in downtown Beijing. On show are some 70 works Zhang has created since the early 1990s.

Zhang drew inspiration from ancient Chu culture and has attempted to blend traditional Chinese ink and Western abstract techniques in his depictions of such subjects as Chinese acrobatic and circus shows.

Besides the ink experiments on rice paper, the 57-year-old artist has also developed his own, self-contained theory about ink art in his book On Ink Painting: Trace and Image.

After its Beijing debut that ends tomorrow, the exhibition goes on from May 12-20 at the Central China University for Nationalities in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province. Zhu Linyong

(China Daily 04/25/2007 page20)