LI HUAYI (B. 1948)

Li Huayi devoted his artistic practice exclusively to landscape painting in 1992, a decade after his move from China to San Francisco. Inspired and influenced by the monumental Californian landscape and postmodernist theories, in Landscape (No. 9) he deconstructs and makes strange the Northern Song tradition: richly textured rock forms dominate the foreground in an unusual, elevated view; a mysterious mist shrouds the mountains in the background. Taking the viewer through a journey of self-reflection, the landscape symbolises a personal and philosophical dialogue between man and nature, a dialogue intricately rooted in the Chinese literary and artistic tradition.