August 24, 2022 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Garden of Hundreds of Plants, a group exhibition featuring the work of three contemporary Chinese artists: Zhenchen Liu, LYU Peng, and Ruijun Shen. Each artist employs traditional media to explore the enduring capacity of nature to heal and to empower. The natural world offers refuge to Shen, Liu, and Lyu, who have resisted the fragmentation and chaos of modern life by returning to the land. Selected works, from painting to printmaking, represent the creative fruits of contemporary artistic practices that engage with nature, tradition, and history. Garden of Hundreds of Plants will be open from September 7 – October 14, 2022, with an opening celebration hosted on September 10th from 4:30–6:30 PM PDT.

The artists included in Garden of Hundreds of Plants draw upon their collective experiences of living and working in China, the rich traditions of Chinese culture, ancient histories, and philosophies that have transcended centuries of change. Nature provides common ground for such intergenerational discourse, and mediates the artists’ disparate relationships with a fast-moving, urbanized contemporary society, and their individual pursuits of agency. Beyond its environmental connotation, sustainability is a unifying theme across the exhibition – the sustainability of modern life, the nourishment of the body, mind, and spirit, and the cultivation of the self.

Ruijun Shen documents her socially and politically-engaged practice of private gardening through traditional painting on silk. The artist researched China’s land-use policy that lasted until Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform, when land in rural areas was organized and owned by the government and large communes, and farmers were allocated small plots of collective land for their own use. This private land, or “self-reserved” land, was the only way individuals could exercise control during that period of time. Shen maintains her own “self-reserved” plot of land as an act of reclamation and autonomy, not only in recognition of China’s history but also as a way to assert independence in spite of the increasingly chaotic, interdependent turn of globalization and networked economies. Amid industrial expansion and the urbanization of the countryside, Shen promotes the idea of reclaiming space by tending a small garden close to home. Eschewing fashionable, imported plants in favor of native species, Shen studies how plants can be grown in symbiotic ways. In her plant paintings, she portrays nature as a fount of physical and psychological fulfillment, cultivating a sanctuary of her own both within and outside of the picture plane.

Zhenchen Liu also responds to the fast-growing environment of China, and his concerns with modern society and its ills brought him to seek healing in nature. Liu highlights the rapid acceleration of human society and our environmental and global instability in his video work. He described the broken state of his spirit and body when he was staring at a computer screen for more than ten hours a day, back hunched and spine aching. In autumn, by chance, he found a medicinal plant nursery in Xinchang Ancient Town. By collecting these plants for his works, Liu creates his “Panacea” series, mixed media works that harness the vitality of spring and the restorative magic of nature. Roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds are pressed into the paper, creating a balance between positive and negative space, between abstraction and figuration, dream and reality. Medicinal herbs and minerals infuse each print with vibrant hues and aromas. In the process of gathering materials and making the work, Liu experienced natural healing, as evidenced in his title “panacea” which refers to a medicine that can cure all. According to Liu, only by re-incorporating the self into nature can people gain real subjectivity.

LYU Peng, who is best known for surreal, ahistorical compositions informed by his scholarship on Ming and Song Dynasty art history, balances his practice of social commentary and moral critique with a spiritual, more contemplative counterpart – landscape painting. While Lyu responds to the loss and confusion ensuing from China’s fast transitions in all of his work, his landscape paintings reveal a desire to return to quieter times. The artist renders scenes of nature with traditional ink painting techniques on silk as a means of reflecting upon the contemporary condition and finding peace within. In the painting process, Lyu consciously plans “accidental” effects and avoids the thinness of traditional free-hand brushwork and monotonous composition for a more contemporary aesthetic. His landscapes are not portrayals of real landscapes, nor entirely derived from imagination, but rather an amalgamation of lines, colors, compositions, and expressive elements with traditional painting techniques and processes. With landscape painting as the medium, Lyu recalls an ancient view of nature and its spiritual sustenance.

Garden of Hundreds of Plants highlights the work of three artists who have retreated to nature in search of creative catharsis. Combining traditional processes with present-day visions and individual struggles, the artists’ works negotiate contemporary Chinese diasporic experience with the weight and wisdom of history. Shen, Liu, and Lyu embark upon their own journeys toward fulfillment and self-determination, from the garden to the studio.

About Ruijun Shen

Ruijun Shen was born in 1976 in Guangzhou, China. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Oil Painting from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2000 and her two Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Montclair State University in 2004 and School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. She studies the history of self-reserved land in China, commenting on the power of self-cultivation as well-being and healing. She believes human beings live in situations where every object and event are interconnected, including our relationship to land and produce, which is forefronted in her gardening practice.

Shen has exhibited as part of The 6th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China; The 8th International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China; and the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen, China. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions including at Pace Gallery, Beijing, China; Times Art Museum, Beijing, China; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; 33 Contemporary Art Center, Guangzhou, China; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Daejeon Municipal Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia; MACRO (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Roma), Rome, Italy; National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, Italy; CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; among others.

Shen’s works are in the permanent collections of the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, Italy; Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Israel; White Rabbit Collection, Australia; and Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA. Ruijun Shen is a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship as well as a Joan Mitchell grant. Shen currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China.

About Zhenchen Liu

Zhenchen Liu was born in 1976 in Shanghai, China. After graduating from the Shanghai University Fine Arts College in 2000 and the Villa Arson (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nice) in 2005, Liu received a “Post-Diplôme” at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, studying painting and video arts. His works focus on the postmodern urban experience, and in his Panacea paintings series, Liu is searching for healing through reconnection to nature and the usage of medicinal plants.

Liu has exhibited at major biennales nationally and internationally, including at Biennale de Belleville, Paris, France; Biennale Internationaled'ArtContemporain Chinois, Montpellier, France; Biennale de L'imageenmouvement, Geneva, Switzerland; Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China; Biennial of Video and New Media, Santiago, Chile; International Triennial of Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Prague; and art fair HEAT, Paris, France. He has held exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Bibliothèquenationale de France, Paris, France; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseille, France; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan; Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China; and more. His works on film have been presented at numerous film festivals including Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival, Kassel, Germany; Locarno International Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland; Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany; transmediale, Berlin, Germany; among many others.

Liu’s works are in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France; Collection Départementaled'ArtContemporain de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, France; Collection Neuflize Vie, Paris, France; and Domaine départemental de Chamarande, Chamarande, France. He is currently working between Paris, France and Shanghai, China.

About LYU Peng

LYU Peng is a Chinese contemporary painter who was born in Beijing, China in 1967 and received his PhD in Chinese Painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China in 2007. Through his landscape paintings, Lyu quietly seeks connection to nature over the never-ending bustle of Chinese urban society. He uses traditional Chinese techniques in contemporary self-reflection as an attempt to find peace in current times. 

Lyu has exhibited as part of the 2013 Venice Biennale, Italy-China Biennial in Monza, Italy, FIAC, Paris, France; Art Cologne, Cologne, Germany; Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Art Now Art Fair, Miami, FL; and ART ASIA Art Fair, Miami, FL. He has exhibited widely nationally and internationally at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Songzhuang Art Center, Beijing, China; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China; Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, South Korea; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; among others.

His works are in the private and public collections of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; Meilun Art Museum, China; Xiamen Art Museum, China; Being3 Gallery, Beijing, China; Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, China; Audi AG, China; Prajna Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, South Korea; Geoje Arts Center, Geoje, South Korea; Mulan Gallery, Singapore; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Asian Art Coordinating Council, Denver, CO; among others. Lyu is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Beijing Institute of Education.