LI HUAYI (B. 1948)

Emanating the monumentality of Northern Song landscape paintings nearly a millennium later, Li’s Mountains in Morning Mist encompasses a remarkable personal expression in an exquisite modernist style. From afar, as if the viewer is standing on a nearby summit, Mountains in Morning Mist yields a riveting, ethereal impression with its rugged mountains and wispy clouds. Forming the yin-yang symbol as a result of their animated entanglement and marked contrast in luminosity, the curving of the bank of clouds against the hook-shaped sierra evokes enlivening wonder. Amid the mist-silhouetted mountains, the juxtaposition of solid volume and airy mass becomes ever-shifting and enigmatic. Meanwhile, the verdant trees at the centre announce a rooted, vibrant presence; their miraculous growth on the precipice, besides symbolising robustness and resilience, encapsulates natural spontaneity. Such serendipity further prevails in Li’s method of creating the inky massifs – in a manner reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s gestural abstraction, Li first splashes ink, then tilts and stretches the paper to realise the mountains. Apart from imparting movement through the subjects of Mountains in Morning Mist, Li instils qi, or “life energy”, into his work.