Preface: Beyond the Material

by Gu Zhenqing

Liang Quan returned to China after his study abroad years ago. After his return in 1983, his work still employed traditional materials like rice paper, color ink. With emphasis on the production, he made good use of layers in the composition. And he used hand-sliced rice papers – of different size and shape – for the collage, cover and juxtaposition, with rich color inks so that he achieved an abstract, individualistic and mellow style. Since the end of 1990, Liang’s outputs have demonstrated the excellent command of abstract composition and conspicuous talent. He adjusts his paintings with random lines and symbols to enhance the geometric expression and overall effect. His work is seemingly derived from the American abstract expression, and shows the marvelous grip of abstract vocabularies and forms. However, the brush and ink echo the practice of traditional Chinese painting. Composed of two different cultural elements, Liang’s production looks both originally and aesthetically strong as well as elegant and graceful. Therefore, he has turned his art into a highbrow yet cross-over spiritual dance.

Years later, Liang Quan adopts a make-it-less approach, leading the production into a laborious loop. For ages he has kept brushing and sticking papers so as to maintain the Zen-thinking in his art. Then the expressive is on the decline while much colder abstract elements on the rise. During the whole course, he painted the slices of papers with ink and juxtaposed them horizontally and randomly on the paper. Though there are many other colors and lines, the work hints at the meaningless and the metaphysical. Thus, he greatly reduces the creativity of his work and ends up with his current practices like painting with faint shades of ink, pasting and framing. Eventually, his works show no other than some horizontal textures. For the artist, the world is divided into two, that is, inside and outside of the frame. And it is the reality that goes beyond the frame. So back to the paper, he replaces, with the repeated simple labor work, the existing rule and methods in art creation as well as the value and vanity-fair logic in the context of art. And by so doing, he maintains an easy mood unaffected by the modern technologies, fashion and consumer culture, and reaches the extraordinary existence. Hence, he thinks he is constructing his concept of “void”. In pursuit of such a clear “void”, he is exploring the infinite and longing for the emancipation of spirits at most.