Lu Shengzhong: Landscape Study

　　Born in 1952 in Shandong, Lu ShengZhong grew up during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. He joined the army and held various jobs before deciding to devote himself full- time to art, studying at Shandong Normal University and Central Academy of Fine Arts. For his first major exhibition held at China's National Art Gallery in Beijing, Lu ShengZhong transformed the galleries into a temple filled with a brilliant panoply of cut-out paper forms, henceforth to be his major means of expression.

　　The ending of the Cultural Revolution led to a tremendous upheaval in the stratified world of Chinese art. As new ideas poured in from the west, young artists who previously had to choose between traditional means of expression and the art for the masses promoted by Mao ZeDong were suddenly exposed to a broad spectrum of modern and contemporary modes of expression. A profusion of short-lived movements and groupings, many with a political edge, soon attracted international attention but to Lu ShengZhong it seemed that much of the work produced was superficial. Thus, he has written in the introduction to the catalogue, "in the mid-1980s I walked away from the cultural confusion of the time, and turned back to the villages, to traditional folk art."

　　The traditional technique of paper cutting, used extensively in the folk art of China, opened the way for Lu ShengZhong to give striking formal expression to ideas of a philosophical and religious nature. "As I cut paper with my scissors and separate the shapes that result from my activity, I am making a statement against the separation of bodyand soul in contemporary thought. Summoning the detached forms of the souls so that they can be reunited with their bodies, can be compared to the juxtaposition of positive and negative forms or the perfect coexistence of the curves of ying and yang."

　　Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, has stated, "among a small group of contemporary Chinese artists who have obtained world-wide renown, Lu ShengZhong is unique in his quest to express individuality and contemporaneity through a Chinese vernacular art form - the art of paper cutting."