1.

Let's start with this flower.

It stands alone yet is solid, its color is heavy yet its posture is complex, it is persistent yet free. If one is familiar with the narrative of Chinese ink painting, such “imagery” associations will not lead to the abstract/concrete coordinate system; the sensations of sight and the direction of consciousness are inseparable. The accidental dynamism and a certain stable force, coexisting and interconnected, closest yet farthest.

“As when scene and heart meet, there is inevitably a time,”as seen in works from exhibitions such as “Shadow of the Wind,” “Rose of Light,” and “Tracing Peach Blossom Spring”, Zhou Li has marked her encounters and impressions with varying hues and temperaments, with life experience unfolding into entirely different realms through differing tonalities. Zhou Li’s works bear the appearance of modern gestural painting, yet they are permeated with the lines of Chinese ink painting. Although they readily evoke the impression of abstraction, their internal constructive logic is ultimately not abstract. Abstraction is a modern form with deep historical and conceptual roots; it is perhaps too entangled with philosophical reductionism, emerging from the Western tradition’s pursuit of representation and its evolution — a cognitive act. But what about within a pictorial context that does not pursue representation?

The flower at the entrance seems to mark its context, the place where it grows: two paintings, starkly contrasting in deep red and black, face each other directly, stretching the space wide with flying lines that glide and layer upon layer. Whether in the interplay of color and line or the mutual gaze between black and red, they neither explain nor structure each other. Each possesses its own vitality, self-sufficient. Yet they are not unrelated; any element wandering among them mutually enhances the others. This seemingly accidental wandering is, of course, meticulously crafted—from the color palette and canvas material to the installation artistry where nothing is off-limits. It is not merely form but also intent, ensuring our connection transcends mere visual perception. As ancient Chinese wisdom holds, all things receive celestial light above and connect with earthly energy below; where heaven and earth meet, spiritual communion occurs. Bridging past and present, revealing the vicissitudes of time...

Benjamin once cited astronomy as the earliest and most typical example of modern science, illustrating how modern technology has transformed the relationship between humans and the cosmos into a purely visual—or cognitive—relationship. While visual perception may yield more information and knowledge, it may also cause meaning to collapse. In One-Way Street, Benjamin states that the most striking difference between ancient and modern humans lies in the former's capacity for cosmic experience: perceiving themselves as part of the closest yet most distant entities and communing with the universe through a shared ecstatic awareness. This contrasts sharply with modern humans, who either fixate on concrete, intricate objects or construct metaphysical systems.

How can such a life experience be conveyed into a visible and shareable form? This might be compared to one aspect of the Romantic movement: “exploring infinite possibilities through intuition.” That movement was a rebellion against the excessive intensification of reason — heart against head, a resistance to “disenchantment,” a call for “re-enchantment.” According to Foucault’s “archaeology,” psyche, language, and community all exist as living organisms, each culture having its own path to re-enchantment. It provides a channel for the rhythms of bodily emotion to be directly presented; Romanticism was only one of these channels. Today’s globally interconnected art world continually develops such paths, yet in the complex mutations of ideas, painting today faces a far more intricate situation — and more possibilities — than the generation of Lin Fengmian ever did.

2.

During Lin Fengmian's era, techniques such as colour application according to form, line work and structural treatment were subjects of Sino-Western synthesis. Today, contemporary Chinese painters use line and colour regardless of Eastern or Western distinctions. While the various artistic conventions have long lost their former external constraints, they remain ever-present and intertwined, exerting their influence together. At this juncture, the challenge lies in distinguishing between them — would that not amount to severing one's own roots? Nevertheless, the starting points still differ, oriented towards the cardinal directions.

Shenzhen, a city of immigrants within China, is home to people from all corners of the country who are engaged in every conceivable trade. Despite their diverse backgrounds and accents, they all speak Mandarin with regional inflections, and have started afresh to carve out boundless possibilities for survival. Neither a centre nor a periphery, Shenzhen resets the linear order of time, as if reaching directly into the future. Zhou Li moved here as a teenager. She has been practising ink painting since a young age and later spent years travelling in France. The art collection in her studio reflects the character of the city—it is filled with student exercises, gifts from friends, and pieces she has acquired herself. Walls and shelves are overflowing, revealing no distinct aesthetic bias. Neither centre nor periphery — very Shenzhen.

In an interview, Wu Hung invited Zhou Li to reflect on the trajectory of her artistic practice. In response, she articulated that, during that period, she endeavoured to traverse the annals of Western art history, seeking to comprehend the rationale behind the manner in which artists articulated themselves. She later realised that she was still best at the “Chinese kung fu” that had first given her an artistic outlet: ink painting. One can indeed sense a certain tactile quality imbued by ink in her work. In Huang Binhong on Painting, Wang Bomin quotes Huang as saying: “I use layered ink to seek gradations within it” and “I am not afraid of a thousand layers of ink, but I fear poor layering that produces dead black. As long as one has the method, even hundreds or thousands of layers will still be rich with moisture.” The 'broken ink' technique involves the gradual permeation of dense ink into light ink, or vice versa, through the utilisation of vertical strokes interspersed with horizontal ones, broken by vertical strokes, and vice versa. This process is executed while the ink is semi-dry, employing the inherent diffusion of water to achieve not only the dualism of yin and yang, light and heavy, thick and thin in forms, but also a sense of freshness and flexibility in tone, as if imbued with the moisture of dew and rain, never fully dry yet firmly established on the paper.

Zhou Li's paintings transcend the simple use of ink wash. Her palette bears the marks of blending and layering multiple materials—ink wash, acrylic, and others—as she experiments with the varied textures and “playfulness” of color. This approach to color, line, and layering preserves the translucent quality of ink wash, resembling accumulated ink without the heavy darkness, while ensuring material stability. For her, the fundamentals of ink application and line drawing are childhood skills, transformed into mastery through continuous daily practice. This is not merely technical proficiency but encompasses the rhythm of inner emotions and experiential sensibilities, along with the imagery direction cultivated through this process. In this sense, her creative methodology is not abstract but carries a subtle narrative quality. Lin Fengmian's paintings represented a classic modern construction of imagery, akin to Romanticism, “aestheticizing mountains and rivers as the landscape of a nation.” Today, geographical isolation no longer poses a barrier. Landscapes of mountains and rivers have been reshaped by modern technology, and the conceptual identification with local culture has gradually become abstract. Personal cultural experiences have gained greater significance. Thus, Zhou Li states that the landscapes in her heart are deeply personal. At the same time, we can discern that no “individual” exists outside of culture. Without a conception of an overarching culture, how could there be conscious personal awareness?

In contemporary art discourse, there exists a seemingly self-evident notion linking so-called contemporaneity to the utilization of Chinese cultural resources. These resources encompass social critique and traditional forms. The concept of “Chinese forms” emerged in the 1930s and 1940s against a distinct backdrop: the modern culture of coastal regions, which had been influenced by Western trends earlier, stood in stark contrast to the traditional societies of the vast inland areas, creating a pronounced disparity in experience. How traditional cultural forms could be employed in modern contexts, along with their political and emotional connotations, became a central concern for the emerging modern nation-state. The contemporary artistic context, however, revolves around China's relationship with globalization: how can traditional cultural elements be utilized and interpreted within contemporary and international frameworks? Or, how can art emerge from the interplay of these two cultural resources? At this juncture, can the so-called “personal” serve as an internal cultural perspective? The awareness of this perspective inevitably emerges after understanding the external world and navigating complex mutual influences. Consequently, one no longer relies on symbols that signify difference—be it ink wash, Chinese characters, or chopsticks—nor does one use any particular concept as a measuring stick. Therefore, when discussing concepts like line and wash in Zhou Li's paintings, I believe they are employed more in a metaphorical sense. They represent acquired, methodological approaches to cultural perception and discernment—concrete rather than conceptual ways of engaging with the present moment.

3.

The evolution of cultural perspectives helps us recognize that the opposite of reason is never emotion, but irrationality; nor is the opposite of emotion reason, but numbness.

“The World in a Flower” and “Night”—two large-scale paintings facing each other across the space. The deliberate, rhetorical arrangement within the compositions, though meticulously planned, flows with the effortless spontaneity of a natural conversation.

Sensibility always originates from personal experience. Paintings naturally connect to the artist's emotions and experiences. The strong link between artworks and the artist's personal experience is particularly prominent in contemporary artistic depictions. While the relationship between them is undoubtedly crucial, to what extent can a work authentically recreate experience? Or through what methods and techniques can it restore the credible value of experience? In truth, a work need not necessarily reveal the artist through the painting; it can exist independently of the artist. The experience of frustration is a typical or universal modern experience, its contradiction lying in the fact that humans are both the objects of modern progress and the subjects constructing modernity. While individuals may define reality differently, subjective experiences remain concrete and precise (though they may also form a kind of cocoon). The vast artistic space we inhabit is not merely the result of formal evolution described by historians as a disciplinary achievement. It exists more because modern experience is entangled with complex, multiple historical threads, and personal experience can organize them in profoundly different ways.

Zhou Li's compositions radiate a weighty, steady dynamism—a flow of diverse emotions, shifts in tonal rhythm, and layers of volume and texture. This movement arises from the dialogue of all beings, an endless exchange of questions and answers, extending into infinite depth. This expansion does not advance to reveal concepts behind form, but rather retreats, sinking into everyday experience. There is no clear distinction between observer and observed, no division between inner and outer. Compared to the sense of defeat or pain in modern aesthetics, her paintings retain the diverse elements of experience, dynamically balancing their multi-layered connections with an unceasing texture. This embodies the Chinese philosophical sensibility pursued in traditional ink painting, as Wang Guowei articulated: “One must enter into it, yet also step outside of it.” Here, both painting and viewing become processes of re-recognizing experience—a quest for affirmative potential. Personal experience ceases to be the object of expression or the unidirectional output of the expresser; instead, it becomes a bridge. An ancient path of self-affirmation, though one that must traverse the tunnel of modern rationality.