Created in 1993, China Scenery was one of the more important works during the early stage of Zhou Chunya’s Mountain Rock Series. It was exhibited in the Chinese Art in the 90s’s: An experience of China at the Sichuan Art Museum in December 1993.

In his creative process, Zhou Chunya studied landscape painting from the classic masters. He favors the rocks drawn by the masters, but is dissatisfied with the overly mild and introverted nature of their work. Unlike the Chinese master painters who understand the material attributes and imagery forms, Zhou spends a lot of effort and attention on the texture and taste, as if having an obsessive-compulsiveness to capture and play with the visual elements hidden behind the rock’s natural attributes. “It’s a matter of form to strengthen and magnify this, while the visual presentation remains the content. One doesn’t need to explain or expound any further, and it will leave one in more surprise and shock than if observed or understood from a conceptual or methodical starting point.”

China Scenery combines the traditional text language with explosive brushstrokes and textures. It changes the gentle and effeminate temperament of the literati, sets free a strength and momentum that takes one by surprise. Zhou Chunya regards the practice of this period as “an ostentatious and adventurous experiment” and identifies this series as the first model in both the refinement of form as well as using art as a proposition of culture. “To leverage this elegant form to convey a sense of violence, an essence verging on what one might even call pornographic. Outside of what might call “acclimatising to the orthodox vision”, I have discovered a certain visual experience that both coheres with my own nature and, at the same time, stands in opposition to traditional customs. My own lack of restraint stands testament to the limited nature of the “mild, introverted and inert” literati art.

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)