Zhuang Hui

"Qilian Range - 04" shows Zhuang performing the act of ‘drawing from nature’ or perhaps ‘drawing nature’ itself. He is shown with his back to the camera during summer. Nature has been Chinese artists’ primary model throughout its art history, but Chinese artists never painted directly from nature. Zhuang Hui’s painting performance emphasizes the predicament he faces as a Chinese artist making contemporary art. On the one hand he wants to establish a  elationship with the landscape of his childhood in order to connect with a fundamentally Chinese idea of what it means to be an artist. But on the other hand that tradition has been lying dormant for nearly a century, buried deep beneath a complex history of cultural interaction.