Magnify/Collect:
Artist:
Mandy Sun
Title:
Building III
Price:
Year:
2013
Medium:
Size - (USA):
100 W x 160 H x 0 D (cm)
Size - (metric):
39.4 W x 63.0 H x 0.0 D (inches)
Theme:
Edition:
Original
Artwork ID:
464219
PDF Copy:
Artwork Description:
To make ancient China look so epically modern and futuristic has been achieved by Bin Ji in this masterful painting. His modestly named, Building III, employs a grid-like representation of one of the most iconic symbols of China and its history. This painting of a Chinese temple or official building offers an intricate yet powerful gesture to modernity, identity and beauty. The stark lines highlight the symmetrical shape of this ancient Chinese building as a structure of tradition, but also as a result of absolute order and control. Such mastery of the fundamental elements that make up a painting; composition, line (mastery of the brush) and form are brought close to their peaks in this painting, one which offers a fresh take on old China. This all-encompassing image, one with an air of intuitive mathematical perfection, provides us with a three-dimensional view of what we recognise as ancient China and one that is on the rise to infinity. A view that has existed for centuries and one that was traditionally reserved for nobility, royalty and religious purposes, this structure has a unity and aesthetic order that is relative to the ideals associated within such establishments. The form of this building; one that signifies cohesion, oneness and stability, mirrors the connotations behind such an iconic structure in both a literal and moral sense. Connotations such as order, precision, togetherness, discipline and beauty are prominent not only in the people who would have once built such a structure, but of those who would reside inside of them. Such mastery of the brush as is employed in this painting, a technique engrained in art production in China since its onset, is representative of such disciplines. The beautiful symmetry perhaps stands as a result of long-held disciplines and traditions in China, but the aptly anonymous Building III by Bin Ji makes sure that our view of China is suited right here in the present. Such a fresh take on a well familiar structure one with boundless connotations of Chinese culture, religion, politics and its history and identity, is re-defined by Bin Ji and brings Chinese culture and its society into a new era.
Keywords:
Original Painting, Undecided Painting
