0404
This is a horizontally formatted ink painting made on absorbent Chinese paper. The entirety of the paper is covered in an overall field of saturated ink wash that varies from very dilute to nearly jet black. The ink is arrayed across the surface in irregular shapes that call to mind tiny multicellular organisms seen through a microscope—small in some places, large in others, pushing and pulling as they merge into one another and separate. In places, the edges of these shapes are fringed with fractal patterns where ink has bled into moistened paper in uncontrollable ways. Into the abstract, overall field, Li Huasheng has inserted the barest suggestion of representation: five houses, perched on the upper ridges of two of these irregular shapes, thereby transforming the entire roiling mass into a landscape.
Artwork Details
- Title: 0404
- Artist: Li Huasheng (Chinese, 1944–2018)
- Date: 2004
- Culture: China
- Medium: Horizontal formatted ink on paper (unbacked)
- Dimensions: Image: 23 13/16 × 55 5/16 in. (60.5 × 140.5 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 2015
- Object Number: 2015.600
- Rights and Reproduction: © Li Huasheng
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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