The grandeur and subtlety of Weng Jijun's artistic world

Weng Jijun's solo exhibition "Objects, Traces, and Dimensions" recently opened at the Zhendan Art Museum in Shanghai. On the opening day, Weng Xiaoyu, curator of the 16th Kassel Document Exhibition and curator of this exhibition, Huang Shengzhi, director of the Zhendan Art Museum, and artist Weng Jijun had a dialogue on the theme of "Objects, Traces, and Dimensions". The exhibition will last until October 26th.

 

The exhibition gathers the artist's important works and a large number of new creations from the past 10 years, comprehensively presenting Weng Jijun's art world centered on "lacquer", including the evolution trajectory of his abstract expression and his profound exploration of materials and forms. He regards lacquer as a collaborator with "temperament", transforming it into an exploration of the origin of life and a depiction of the form of the universe in extremely time-consuming and laborious extreme labor, making matter, time, and space tangible and touchable experiences of the universe. The exhibition also explores how tradition provides clues for innovation, integrating the philosophical and aesthetic connotations carried by lacquer art into modern abstract expression.

 

Weng Jijun was born in Shanghai in 1955. He graduated from the Fine Arts College of Jiangxi Normal University in 1981 and further studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1994. He has served as the director of the Lacquer Painting Art Committee of the Shanghai Artists Association, a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Arts and Crafts, and a member of the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Expert Committee.