ODE TO HENGYUE

With deep feelings and high spirits, I continuously praise Hengyang with my pen.

Hengyang, with its long history, rich culture, and outstanding talents, is the city where I was born and raised, and where I studied, worked, and lived for a lifetime. I have always been proud to be a Hengyang native and honored to serve Hengyang's development! Shenzhen is a modern and vibrant city, a gathering place of talents, a brilliant southern gateway of the motherland, and a frontier for internationalization. Over the years, due to my work and interests, I have actively strengthened cooperation and exchanges with Hengyang natives and literary and artistic figures in Shenzhen, striving to promote the prosperous development of culture and art between Hengyang and Shenzhen!

After my retirement, with the great concern of the Hengyang Municipal Party Committee and Government, I utilized my familiarity with Hengyang's cultural and historical advantages, leveraged my skills in poetry, calligraphy, and planning, and worked tirelessly day and night to refine my words and sentences. After eight years of effort, I compiled and published the poetry anthology Journey to the Southern Mountain and the couplet collection Couplets Celebrating Hengzhou, which received praise from experts and readers, caused positive social repercussions, and effectively promoted Hengyang.

The inkstone is silent, but the ink flows with fragrance. I selected some works from Journey to the Southern Mountain and Couplets Celebrating Hengzhou and carefully created others. In August of this year, on the eve of the successful convening of the Third Hunan Provincial Tourism Development Conference, I held the "Ode to Hengyue - Hongzhi Calligraphy Exhibition" in Hengyang, aiming to help more visitors appreciate Hengyang's scenery, understand its humanities, and share the fragrance of couplets and ink.

In the early winter, the southern breeze sways. Thanks to the invitation of Shenzhen artistic friends and with the strong support of the Shenzhen Culture, Radio, Television, and Tourism Sports Bureau, this exhibition is jointly hosted by the Shenzhen Municipal Committee for Care of the Next Generation, the Hunan Provincial Cultural and Historical Research Institute, the Hengyang Municipal Committee for Care of the Next Generation, and the Hengyang Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism, and Sports Bureau. It is co-organized by the Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Hengyang Art Museum, and Hunan Huxiang Calligraphy and Painting Academy, and co-sponsored by the Shenzhen Hengyang Chamber of Commerce. The exhibition has moved to Shenzhen, aiming to deepen cultural exchanges between the two cities, further enhance Hengyang's popularity, reputation, and influence, and help Hengyang reach a broader stage!

Ode to Hengyue, guests delight in Hengyang. Finally, I sincerely invite all visitors to journey to the Southern Mountain, celebrate Hengzhou with couplets, and create calligraphy inspired by the Southern Mountain. Please come to Hengzhou to compose poems. Let's climb up the steps together in the world of poetry, couplets, and calligraphy!

Xie Hongzhi

Early Winter of the Year of the Dragon (2024)

I express my heartfelt joy and sincere congratulations on the solo exhibition of young artist Wu Shuang in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen, a city of the youth with an average age below 33, is a city where youthfulness, passion, and the pursuit of dreams converge. Youthful vitality is not only a demographic state but also a symbol of the city's spirit. Shenzhen embraces every young dream chaser with its vast embrace.

Flowers Bloom in Streets, Flowers and Plants are Gentle and Warm—This is the theme presented by young artist Wu Shuang to the audience in this exhibition. Focusing on and depicting flowers and plants has become a unique vision stemming from Wu Shuang's feminine consciousness. The flowers and plants in her paintings are like pearls, with light and posture, colors and fragrances, illusory and magnificent, ink and color coexist, and the charm of their forms often stems from instant intuition and emotions. "Flowers Bloom in Streets, You May Return Leisurely," the author's intimate connection with natural flora also lingers in the inner vitality of nature's booming life. In her paintings, we can sense the author's sincere affection for nature, plain and warm. The lush vegetation in her works signifies the arrival of spring sunshine. She seeks creative freedom through imaginative thoughts and leads us into a dreamlike world filled with beauty. It is noteworthy that Wu Shuang has always focused on exploring creation and refining personal techniques and vocabularies through Eastern ink painting. The author emphasizes, "To inherit, one must possess tradition, history, and the creative achievements of predecessors in their knowledge storage; combining it with contemporary elements is because the creator integrates real life and the new aesthetics of the times and uses innovative techniques." In her paintings, Wu Shuang often employs techniques similar to boneless painting, calmly rendering water stains to form the natural charm and implication of ink and brushwork amidst the colorful flow of ink and color. In the realm of ink painting, wanton colors, flying brushstrokes, and graceful plants are uniformly and gently immersed in the blend of ink and color. Time seems to stop, yet everything remains vibrant. This is Wu Shuang's conscious "metaphysical" expression in ink painting.

The Guan Shanyue Art Museum has always paid attention to the development of young art and attached importance to and implemented young art exhibitions. Over the years, young artist activities have become a grand gathering of art that brings together, discovers, and shapes young talents. This grand gathering will become a cultural map of youth dynamics in our time that we look forward to and envision. Meanwhile, during their growth on the museum platform, the younger generation of artists find emotional resonance within the group, reestablish their imagination of others and themselves, and extend the fusion of creative interaction, common understanding, individual development, and cultural identity. This is precisely the vision we have pursued for many years.

Chen Junyu, Director of Guan Shanyue Art Museum

Culture serves as a pivotal fulcrum for promoting high-quality development. In the long course of history, the Chinese nation has created a time-honored and profound traditional culture, leaving behind countless invaluable historical and cultural heritage. Behind these cultural heritages lie the historical development of the Chinese nation, showcasing its spiritual demeanor and bearing its cultural confidence. Yangtze River culture is a representative symbol of the Chinese nation, a landmark of Chinese civilization, and an important source for nurturing socialist core values. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has conducted numerous research inspections along the Yangtze River, gazing affectionately and offering earnest instructions. Standing at a historical and overall perspective, he made the major strategic decision to "promote the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt," guiding high-quality development and fostering the prosperity of Yangtze River culture.

As a national team for contemporary Chinese art creation and research, the China National Academy of Painting bears the mission of protecting, promoting, inheriting, and developing Chinese culture. It has the responsibility to forge fine literary and artistic works based on the great practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics. To this end, the China National Academy of Painting thoroughly implements a series of important speeches and instructions from General Secretary Xi Jinping regarding the protection, inheritance, and promotion of Yangtze River culture. It establishes creative orientations centered around the development goals of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in the new era, conducting research on the tracing of Yangtze River civilization, protection and inheritance, contemporary values, cultural connotations, and other aspects. With practical actions, it eulogizes the country's development achievements and the new look of the times under the leadership of the Party.

In 2023, the China National Academy of Painting actively prepared and planned the Yangtze River Theme Art Creation Project, inviting over 160 renowned experts from the academy and 11 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government along the Yangtze River to participate. It successively organized artists to inspect, gather inspiration, and sketch along the Yangtze River, striving to comprehensively and diversely tell the "story of the Yangtze River" with fine works and depict a new picture of harmony between mountains, waters, and cities with ink and brushwork. At the same time, it promoted Yangtze River culture and continued historical traditions through travel sketches, literary and artistic commentary, seminars, theoretical research topics, and other forms. "Protecting the Beautiful Yangtze River —— China National Academy of Painting's Yangtze River Theme Art Exhibition" is an important achievement of the Yangtze River Theme Art Creation Project. The exhibition is divided into five chapters: "A Natural Landscape of Ingenious Beauty," "A Cultural Destination Shining Like a Galaxy," "Developed and Prosperous Water Conservancy and Shipping," "Affluent and Prosperous River Basin Economy," and "The Path of Ecological Priority and Green Development." After strict scrutiny by the Art Committee of the China National Academy of Painting, a total of 139 thematic works were selected for the exhibition. These works are rich in themes, diverse in appearance and forms, deeply exploring and reflecting the natural scenery, historical culture, and humanistic sentiments of the Yangtze River. They fully demonstrate the colorful appearance and fighting spirit of the people along the Yangtze River in pursuing and creating a better life, with special emphasis on modernity, academia, and innovation. They embody the artists' passion in depicting the beautiful scenery of the Yangtze River, showcasing its charm in the new era, and writing a new chapter of Yangtze River culture!

To better leverage the positive role of excellent artworks in promoting Yangtze River culture, "Protecting the Beautiful Yangtze River —— China National Academy of Painting's Yangtze River Theme Art Exhibition" will be toured in multiple provinces and cities along the Yangtze River in 2024, which is also a concrete practice of protecting, inheriting, and developing Yangtze River culture. This Shenzhen Station touring exhibition is the eighth stop of the series of exhibitions this year, and it has received strong support from the Guanshanyue Art Museum, further promoting exchanges and interactions between the National Academy of Painting and the Shenzhen art circle and artists. Here, we also express our gratitude to the relevant leaders and exhibition team of the Guanshanyue Art Museum for their hard work.

2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping's thoughts on culture and the leadership of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the China National Academy of Painting will closely follow the pulse of the times, adhere to the people's stance, uphold the principles of upholding tradition while seeking innovation, tell the story of China with emotion and effort, stand firmly on the "plateau" of literature and art with a more high-spirited attitude, strive to reach the "peak" of literature and art, and endeavor to present more and better literary and artistic works to the people.

The Shenzhen Guanshan Yue Art Museum will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation with sister units at home and abroad, jointly explore new paths and models for the development of the art museum industry, work together to promote the high-quality development of the art museum industry, contribute the wisdom and strength of the art museum to inherit and promote excellent traditional Chinese culture, promote national cultural exchange and mutual learning, and enhance Chinese cultural confidence, and jointly draw a new chapter of prosperous development of art in the new era.

Throughout the history of Chinese art in the 20th century, Guan Shanyue undoubtedly stands as a pioneer and practitioner of traditional Chinese painting innovation. In the first half of the 20th century, he used his brush as a weapon to directly depict the War of Resistance, and in his early years, he sketched the landscapes of the rear areas, tracing the origins of Dunhuang to draw on the essence of ancient art. In the early days of the founding of New China, traditional Chinese painting was subject to much criticism, and its transformation became the focus of efforts for traditional Chinese painters. Inheriting the concept of his mentor Gao Jianfu's new traditional Chinese painting, Guan Shanyue continued the sketching practices and methods he had employed since the 1940s. Taking the literary and artistic ideas of New China as his starting point and foundation, he reshaped the sketching of traditional Chinese painting and led the innovation of this art form.

In 1953, the National Traditional Chinese Painting Exhibition was successfully held, with critic Wang Chaowen writing the exhibition review "Facing Life," advocating for sketching in traditional Chinese painting. From this point on, the wave of sketching in traditional Chinese painting began. Guan Shanyue's sketches of New China presented visual images of the new society, responding to the innovative requirements of the times placed on traditional Chinese painters. For this exhibition, we have selected four landmark sketching practices of his after the founding of New China: sketches of Lingnan (south of the Five Ridges), the capital, Hubei, and the Yangtze River Gorges. Through works, documents, and research texts, we outline the artistic historical logic of Guan Shanyue's innovation of traditional Chinese painting during the New China period.

Guan Shanyue once summarized his western sketching journey with the phrase "If I don't move, I have no paintings to create." If "walking" was the essence of his sketching in the 1940s, then the key to Guan Shanyue's innovation of traditional Chinese painting during the New China period was his successful connection of on-site sketching with the culture and reality, production and construction of New China. His sketching works, on the one hand, connected with the visual perception of the working people, and on the other hand, recreated the visual landscapes belonging to and created by the working people. As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "The country belongs to the people, and the people are the country." The generation of painters including Guan Shanyue, through their sketches of the beautiful landscapes, demonstrated the "people-oriented" nature of literature and art, portraying the landscape of the people.

Director of Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum

Chen Junyu

Futian, the Premier District, a Happy Homeland;

Childlike Charm, boundless beauty, freely natural.

In this warm winter, the "Childlike Art - 2024 Excellent Works Exhibition of Art Teachers from Primary and Middle Schools in Futian District" has arrived as scheduled. We gather here to enjoy the grand event of "childlike charm" in Futian's art education.

What is "Childlike Charm"? It refers to the innocence and naturalness akin to that of a child; "Childlike Art" represents the artistic value pursuit of Futian's art education. Since 2018, we have actively promoted research on the "childlike" art education model, with the educational goal of "Aesthetics education filled with childlike charm, nurturing childhood for a lifelong enrichment," and the strategies of "Cultivating students who display innocence, shaping teachers who radiate childlike hearts; constructing courses full of childlike joy, creating a campus culture where childlike spirits coexist harmoniously," to make school art education and teaching full of genuine "childlike charm" and make art learning the happiest and most fulfilling life experience for students. Today, the fruits are abundant, and the gardens are full of students. "Childlike Art" has become a shining business card for Futian's art education.

If "making every child more like a child" is our value pursuit, then allowing teachers to seek authenticity in "childlike" art education is our greatest value return. Futian art teachers have undergone transformation and growth in "childlike" art education. The beautiful tableau of "Endless Charm of Childhood, Radiant Splendor in Futian" is a sincere tribute to the value pursuit of Futian's art education. Through extensive collection and rigorous selection, 110 artworks by frontline primary and middle school art teachers in Futian District are sincerely presented here. Oil paintings, Chinese paintings, watercolors, lacquer paintings... Every stroke is an interpretation and expression of emotion, every color is an understanding and perception of the world. These works either express the perception and appreciation of ancient nature, or convey the understanding and reflection on current trends, or demonstrate the understanding and inheritance of excellent traditional culture, fully conveying the truth, goodness, and beauty of art educators.

The Premier District, Happy Futian. On June 5, 2014, the Education Research Center of Futian District, Shenzhen (now the Futian District Education and Science Academy), and the Guan Shanyue Art Museum signed an agreement on "Museum-School Interconnection" cooperation. Since then, Futian District's primary and middle schools have carried out in-depth cooperation with the Guan Shanyue Art Museum for ten years. Beauty shared brings harmony to the world. By regularly organizing museum-school interconnection exchange activities, we have fully connected the rich artistic resources of the museum with the art education needs of schools, integrated and utilized regional art education resources, and leveraged the social educational significance of museum-school cooperation.

"Childlike Charm" blooms, and flowers bloom with sound. This exhibition of artworks by Futian art teachers is an expression of "childlike" art education work, as well as an exploration, a sorting out, and a reflection. We also look forward to it becoming a professional platform for art education peers to exchange and learn.

We thank the support of the "Museum-School Interconnection Cooperation Program" for the smooth progress of this event, which recognizes teachers' dedication to teaching while also encouraging them to persist in pursuit and improvement, continuously exploring and innovating. We thank all education peers for their support and care for Futian's art education, and we thank the Guan Shanyue Art Museum for its strong support for this exhibition!

Remain true to our original aspiration, keep our mission firmly in mind, embrace our childlike charm, and let Futian shine with radiant splendor. We believe that Futian's art education will definitely have a brighter and more prosperous future!

This exhibition is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, wishing our great motherland prosperity, peace, and security!

Futian District Education and Science Academy, Shenzhen

November 12, 2024

The dialogue between thought and poetry is a long one. It has barely begun.

—Martin Heidegger

The relationship between "Dichten" (poetry) and "Denken" (thought) was a focus of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, for a long time. The former refers to poetry and poetic composition, broadly speaking, works and creation, while the latter refers to thought and contemplation. Both converge in "language," and examining them in the context of today's era of Large Language Models (LLMs) holds special significance.

Since John McCarthy proposed research on artificial intelligence (AI) based on machine learning at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, AI has gone through a long dormant period. The historic event in 2016 when Alpha Go defeated the human world champion in Go signaled AI's official ascent to the center of the historical stage. With the rapid iteration of deep learning and neural network technologies, AI has on the one hand expanded human capabilities and boundaries in exploring knowledge, and on the other hand, it has sparked deep concerns about human subjectivity being replaced by technology—will human creativity become a relic of the technological age? As the original expression of human culture, does art still retain its unique value in this era?

Driven by a new wave of frontier technologies in digitization and intelligence, accompanied by rapid developments in industry and life, we are undergoing a great transformation in the sense of human civilization history. At this moment, the frontier of daily technology, dominated by big data and AI, has not only reshaped the daily lives of human society but also forced us to rethink the value of the self and the meaning of existence. Faced with the impact of rapid technological evolution, how will art, as a core area of humanistic concern, respond to this era full of unknowns? How do we confront the new experiences created by new technologies? How do we reunderstand the essence of "human" in the hybrid reality constructed by the metaverse, virtual reality, and AI?

Art, as the light of civilization shining in cave paintings 60,000 years ago, has always been witnessing and driving the progress of human consciousness and culture. So far, no matter how rapidly science and technology have developed, they still cannot penetrate the depths of the human heart nor replicate the uniqueness of individual consciousness and creativity. Although AI possesses powerful computing capabilities, its essence is still programmed and designed by humans, unable to transcend human subjective experiences and emotions. So, in this "age of artificial intelligence," how will artistic practice, as a social action of the mind, reposition itself in the expansion of technology and continue to serve as a unique expression of human spirit and emotion?

The above is a cluster of questions that the exhibition "Poetry and Thoughts in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" attempts to engage with. This exhibition covers various forms such as digital art, AI art, interactive art, and interactive video installations. Through the works of 11 representative artists, it responds to the cold logic of technology through a poetic gaze at reality. Through the keen senses of the artists, it attempts to glimpse many prophecies of the "post-singularity" era and explore the complex and multidimensional relationships between humans, technology, and machines. The exhibition not only showcases the application of technology in artistic creation but also reveals how art achieves new knowledge production and cultural recreation in ever-expanding reality through the expression of individual artistic experiences.

—Curator's Words, Wu Shini