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Lot Essay
Ding Yi, who was born in Shanghai in 1962, is regarded as the pioneer of Chinese contemporary abstracted painting and enjoys a high international reputation. He studied at Shanghai Arts & Crafts College since 1980 when he was 19 and was deeply affected by Chinese painters Guanliang, Wu Dayu, Zhao Wuji who all stayed in France, and the master of Western Modernism Paul C?zanne. In 1989, he displayed his works in 1989 Avant-Garde Exhibition, abandoning the realism, narration and representation of that age and expressing the inner power by practicing 'Crosses' to deliver the abstracted meaning of reality.
Ding first used 'Cross' to be the subject of his painting starting from 1986 which distinctively separated him from the main crowd of Realism in the Chinese art circles. He embodied his visual impression through an abstracted aesthetics based on the repetition and the composition of the symbol of the 'Cross'. This implies a strict logic and a complicated painting process. The complex movement it created can then be appraised by visualization.
Ding started pursuing various experiences and visual effects of hand-painting through different materials since 1993. He has used linen, carton, watercolor paper, corrugated paper, and finished fabrics as a painting instrument. For the colors, he has tried pencils, marker pens, chalks, watercolor pens, ball pens, charcoal, paint and acrylic. Three pieces of fine work that were created by acrylic finished fabrics, crayon paper and oleograph, have been displaced this time in the auction.
Appearance of the Crosses Series (Lot 472), a triptych created in 1999, is a milestone of Ding's work. Painting on finished products like plaid is the beginning of a new artistic concept. The checked plaid is a sign of distinction for clans and the dissimilitude of checked patterns implies an explicit indication of identity. However, it has become ordinary industrial finished products in China and their pattern has lost their original meaning, turning into daily material for clothing and even attaching with aesthetic label of 'exotic feeling.' Ding suggested, 'The reality composed by the imagination and misinterpretation of cultures occupies the major parts of history. The process of occurrence and development of Chinese Contemporary Art is the misreading step of Western Modern Art which is served as the dominant reference.'
Ding first used 'Cross' to be the subject of his painting starting from 1986 which distinctively separated him from the main crowd of Realism in the Chinese art circles. He embodied his visual impression through an abstracted aesthetics based on the repetition and the composition of the symbol of the 'Cross'. This implies a strict logic and a complicated painting process. The complex movement it created can then be appraised by visualization.
Ding started pursuing various experiences and visual effects of hand-painting through different materials since 1993. He has used linen, carton, watercolor paper, corrugated paper, and finished fabrics as a painting instrument. For the colors, he has tried pencils, marker pens, chalks, watercolor pens, ball pens, charcoal, paint and acrylic. Three pieces of fine work that were created by acrylic finished fabrics, crayon paper and oleograph, have been displaced this time in the auction.
Appearance of the Crosses Series (Lot 472), a triptych created in 1999, is a milestone of Ding's work. Painting on finished products like plaid is the beginning of a new artistic concept. The checked plaid is a sign of distinction for clans and the dissimilitude of checked patterns implies an explicit indication of identity. However, it has become ordinary industrial finished products in China and their pattern has lost their original meaning, turning into daily material for clothing and even attaching with aesthetic label of 'exotic feeling.' Ding suggested, 'The reality composed by the imagination and misinterpretation of cultures occupies the major parts of history. The process of occurrence and development of Chinese Contemporary Art is the misreading step of Western Modern Art which is served as the dominant reference.'