Garden of Hundreds of Plants (百草园)

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. 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 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. 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 journeys toward fulfillment and self-determination, from the garden to the studio.