Continuum

Pearl Lam Galleries is delighted to present Continuum, a solo exhibition by Chinese abstract artist Zhou Yangming, to coincide with the week of Art Basel in Hong Kong. The exhibition features a selection of paintings created between 2007 to 2018. The highlight is a seven-metre-long ink on silk piece, which will hang from the ceiling and extend onto the floor. In addition, archival materials together with sketches will be on display to further contextualize the artist’s creative process.

Zhou does not consider individual paintings as representative of a set period of time; rather, all his paintings and their relationships with one another constitute a singular temporal universe. As the Dao De Jing states, “The way bears sensation, sensation bears memory, sensation and memory bear abstraction, and abstraction bears all the world.”

Zhou’s paintings illustrate a unique concept of space that is born out of a relationship between movement and transformation. They do not possess a logical narrative. There is no reconstructed circumstance or conversation. Lines within his paintings become conversational with the consciousness of writing. Zhou’s oeuvre focuses on repetition, continuity, and achieving a mental clarity through self-cultivation to reach a spiritual infinity. By using markers, Chinese ink, and acrylic paint in a disciplined manner, the artist negotiates the formal structure of painting through an intricate system of vertical and horizontal lines as well as dots.

Painting these lines and dots has become a part of the artist’s everyday life. He paints them meticulously in order to express his own fluctuating and serene emotions. Zhou creates different colour fields and leaves tiny spaces in between shapes to create an illusion. He then applies a second layer by painting line upon line and dot upon dot in dialogue with the background colour, enticing viewers to study the painting more closely. Zhou shifts his focus to the toe of the brush by emptying his mind, which he hopes will deeply resonate with audiences.