Michael Ku Gallery is pleased to announce the coming exhibition “Landscape of Man” in July.  It is a special exhibition of introduction to the art of Lou Ye’s cinema and the art of three participating Chinese contemporary artists: Song Kun, Wei Jia and Qi Zing. Few directions are linked within the exhibition: one revolves presenting and further recreating the art of the filmmaker’s films; the original immense cinematic corpus including sounds, videos, visual and images, texts as well as manuscripts will be deconstructed in the exhibition into various sections. Another direction points to the juxtaposition of artists’ works that are associated with the spirit of the filmmaker’s creation, looking at independent yet mutually corresponding artistic creations and attitudes from a wider cultural dimension.

As one of the representatives of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers, Luo Ye’s cinema reflects ‘human’ on the one hand as well as his/her background and epoch on the other hand. A universality and permanence emerge from the profound depiction and observation of people whereas the network behind them further points out the particularities of the era to which they belong as well as its uniqueness. For example, stories of the characters in Spring Fever and Mystery can happen in any region or city on earth in any epoch. Meanwhile, the various and particular phenomena (rather than superficial presentations) in China today that the filmmaker relates have to undergo profound observation in order to become more accurate and to arouse sympathy more easily.

Corresponding expressions can also be found in art with artists using diverse forms. Song Kun, Wei Jia, Qi Xing, three artists born in the 1970s and the 1980s depict human figures through certain languages of painting. It is interesting to explore figures, sometimes extending from inner feelings and observation to reach external environment of existence. Sometimes it is just the opposite: the external world of reality directly affects and reflects unto human thoughts and behavior. On the level of expressing creative ideas, the three artists all convey the picture’s physical composition and metaphysical internal mental shifts through depicting ‘hands’. Discussions about the feel of hand in painting and Luo Ye’s idea of using hand-held camera in filming are probably approximate. The feel of hand can exhibit possibilities of diverse distinctions that are beyond expectation and consciousness.