In recent times the shan-shui tradition of mountain-water painting is becoming increasingly important. Contemporary artists are updating the genre and transferring it to the media of photography, sculpture, installation, video and performance.
Landscape painting in China looks back on a tradition of over 1500 years. It does not concentrate on reproducing a true image of a visible outer world, but reflects the inner experience of the painter. The opposite poles of mountain and water, the solid and the liquid, are subjected to a dynamic exchange as a symbol of the balance in the world.
The invited artists reflect the tradition dedicated to harmony, and develop alien and yet pictorially powerful worlds of experience which extend beyond national borders and make nature the medium for individual systems of order and ideals, but also for change and upheaval.
A project in collaboration with Philipp Bollmann