Last month, IPF organized our first ever group adventure to the Zhi Art Museum. We woke up early, shared cars, and had a great time exploring Fantasy together with new friends.
Here is Rorí’s recap of the museum experience.🖊
《奇异的世界》135.5×69cm 纸本彩墨 1983
© 艺术家家族珍藏
According to ancient Chinese folklore, a carp that swims upstream and leaps over the falls of the Yellow River transforms into a mystical, flying dragon. This is an appropriate metaphor for the lifelong career of Luis Chan, whose paintings seem to soar straight from a deep memory of childhood fairy tales and splash into the sleepy reality of our waking lives. In “Fantasy” everyday characters blossom into strange, winged creatures, traditional Chinese landscapes melt and morph with human features, and floating figures sail by us as if in a dream.
Luis Chan was born in a small town in Panama in 1905 and moved to Hong Kong as a child, where he quickly made a name for himself as the “Watercolor King of Hong Kong.” Many of these original pieces are on display at the Zhi Art Museum, where the tranquil watercolor style inside the museum walls reflect the peaceful, still nature outside the large windows. These early paintings showcase a great talent for capturing the traditional day-to-day urban scenes around him, and as he grew as an artist Chan began to experiment with fusing the reality of everyday life with the vivid imagination of his own subconscious.
《无题》（五鱼游）74×134cm 纸本彩墨 1979
© 艺术家家族珍藏
《无题》（观龙的人群） 50.5×75cm 纸本丙烯 1968-1985
© BAO私人收藏
Strangely enough, Chan spent decades painting fish, and they are an important theme in his work and for the entire exhibition as a whole. According to the museum guide, searching for the fish throughout the exhibition is a journey in which, “mirages can be viewed, illusions can be entered, and fantasies revealed,” and this journey does not disappoint. Finding all six fish present in “Fantasy” is a fun scavenger hunt that enables us to humorously trace the thread of Chan’s constantly shifting artistic expression.
The exhibition is divided into eight sections according to artistic style, and the 56 featured paintings span a career that lasted over 70 years, from his early work in traditional watercolor paintings to his later experimentation in grand, abstract surrealism. Set at the base of Laojunshan Mountain south of Chengdu, a holy place for Taoism, the Zhi Art Museum’s architecture and location accurately reflect the fantastical themes present in “Fantasy.” With one step at the base of reality and the other in the peaks of imagination, a walk through the three floors of the exhibition is a sensational journey through the history of Chan’s work.
Perhaps most striking is the top floor of the museum, which displays five of his later, most conceptual works of art. These paintings feature bold colors and abstract shapes that bleed and blend with one another in a literal splash of artistic expression, and contrast dramatically with his early traditional work. And maybe that is the point of “Fantasy.” As humans, spirits, and phantasms swirl and swim up the current of life together- they eventually soar away from the everyday existence of reality, and leave behind only colors and riddles for the living to interpret, just like the life and career of deceased painter Luis Chan.
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