Rock

In the tradition of rock collecting and connoisseurship in China, rocks have long been viewed as microcosms of the universe that invite contemplation. Meticulously rendered with a sense of heightened hyperrealism, Rock unfolds as an intimate portrait of a slender scholar’s rock, with jagged peaks and angled crags rising from the abyss. Liu Dan transforms the rock's textured surfaces into a gateway to an imaginary world.

The art of Liu Dan is deeply rooted in the classical tradition of Chinese ink painting, and yet he approaches the medium with a distinctively contemporary perspective. His fascination with the structural essences of objects prompts him to extract the rock from its original context, thereby making it simultaneously familiar and strange. Through the act of decontextualization and magnification to the extreme, Liu Dan ventures beyond narrative constraints in pursuit of a pure visual experience.