Guan Liang’s 1940 masterpiece Shan Shui Liang Ting (《山水凉亭》) symbolises the integration of Western modernist techniques into the venerable tradition of Chinese landscape art. Lin Fengmian’s late creation, Shan Shui (《山水》), from 1985, embodies his deep investigation into the realm of new colour ink wash painting. He ingeniously infused the distinctive essence of Ming and Qing dynasty blue-and-white porcelain, crafting a harmonious dialogue between linearity and chromaticity. Yin Zhaoyang’s rendition of Cézanne’s late depictions of Mont Sainte-Victoire, after 1882, showcases Cézanne’s retreat to a quaint town near his birthplace, where he dedicated himself to capturing the landscape’s portrait’. Through nearly eighty iterations, the recurring imagery and steadfast themes sparked a revolution in visual language and formality. This bold exploration of structure, stroke, palette, and mass heralded a pivotal shift towards the self-governance of painting styles in the modernist era, ushering the landscape back into a profound spiritual sanctuary.

Two landscapes, one collected and one replicated, inaugurate Yin’s profound re-engagement with the concept of ‘landscape’. In 2010, at forty, Yin revisited his native Mount Song in Henan to initiate his exploration of landscapes, setting forth a novel ambition: to reconstruct the somewhat antiquated notion of ‘landscape’; and thereafter, making annual journeys to Mount Song from Beijing. This enduring endeavour has yielded a prolific output of landscape works to this day. Yin extends the tradition, rooted since the Republic of China era, of rejuvenating Chinese landscape painting through the medium of oil, intertwining the sculptural lineage of the Wei and Jin dynasties with the classical grandeur, picturesque essence, and ephemeral play of light and shadow characteristic of Western landscape art. Furthermore, he weaves in the revolutionary shift in landscape expression initiated by Cézanne and the postmodernist reconnection with the spiritual and societal domains. These varied artistic expressions and dialects merge within the exhibition space to present a novel ‘contemporary landscape’, where the uninhibited and iterative brushwork, intertwined with the repressed desires of youth and the mystical realms of Myth (《神话》), beneath the stratifications of colour, emerge both fantastical and majestic, desolate yet deeply solemn.

Utopia (《乌托邦》) captures Yin’s most pivotal themes: human figures and landscapes. Spatially, Cold Branches and Scared Magpies (triptych) (《寒枝惊鹊》) amalgamates the dispersed perspective found in ancient Chinese landscapes with the singular focus of monologues in Western theatrical settings. In form, its monumental structures, towering mountains, and vivid hues coupled with robust, dense strokes reiterate a profound spiritual communion, a quest for the pinnacle of pictorial expression.

How does landscape painting originate? This query straddles the domains of both artistic practice and art history. Before landscapes became a genre unto themselves, artistic focus was dedicated to depicting biblical scenes, deities, and angels, subsequently shifting to monarchs and the nobility, with painting serving predominantly as a means for commission. The emergence of Dutch landscape art, along with the ascendancy of Romanticism and the genre of historical mood paintings, endowed landscapes with attributes of the ‘sublime’ and the ‘picturesque’. The advent of impressionism, alongside breakthroughs in light and technology, heralded a new era where faithful representations of nature transformed landscapes into a distinct subject matter. Cézanne marked the beginning of landscape language’s independence, and the postmodernist era recontextualised landscapes back to reality to address social and political themes. In contemporary times, the ‘nature’ we encounter is no longer the pastoral idylls or serene retreats of yesteryear; it has been corrupted by societal influences, morphing into a landscape that reflects the societal milieu and the emotional underpinnings of our reality. Yin’s abstract landscapes narrate the epilogue of this evolution, showcasing a revolutionised return to painting that underscores the inherent spirituality of the medium.