Ink+Brush: Quest. Ink Works by Pan Gongkai at the China Art Museum, Shanghai 2016-17.

Pan Gongkai’s (潘公凯) reverence for ink painting as a Chinese art form ensures an intense awareness of how his own work locates itself within this centuries-old tradition. The overall ‘quest’ of his exhibition is divided into two distinct developmental stages. First, we wander through Room 21 of the China Art Museum, which houses ‘The Follower: Exploring the Origins of Chinese Ink Art.’ We, subsequently, move into Room 22 and wander through ‘Creations: The Expansion of Chinese Ink Art’. What, however, does Pan Gongkai mean when he names one half of his exhibition ‘The Follower’? Literally, ke tu (课徒) means ‘following a lesson.’ As a concept, however, it points us toward the student/apprentice figure as a fixed concept within Chinese history and culture. This ‘follower’ revered (traditionally, his) master and under his guidance developed into an educated young man. He would follow his teacher’s lessons meticulously, engage with him in philosophical debates, and he would treat his educator with the profound respect that this role commanded within Chinese society, and commands still in the form of the modern teacher. It was Confucius’ followers who, in an ultimate mark of respect, recorded and compiled into the Analects the philosophies and apercus of their great master.

Transplant ke tu into a modern artistic context and we find Pan Gongkai who, in this exhibition, makes the transition from master to pupil, thus locating himself within the grand narrative of Chinese ink painting and the classical and 20th century masters that preceded him. In Ink+Brush: Quests, Pan Gongkai explores his nation’s inheritance of ink painting as an art form. Wielding his brush with its inky, black thread he weaves in and out of the centuries, linking them together into a noble tapestry of understanding that informs his own creations. His own work, however, constitutes a bold new stitch. Pan Gongkai revamps this art form and brings it forward into the contemporary Chinese context, not only through the abstraction of his style, but through the sheer scale of his paintings.

The Chinese viewer’s experience of ink paintings has changed over the centuries. Small-scale works that lent themselves to a tactile engagement have evolved into blown up swathes of miry ink extending the entire length of art gallery walls. For Pan Gongkai, it is this physical exhibition space that is crucial when creating his works: “nowadays, a principal factor in the way that we view Chinese art is its exhibition within the vast dimensions of the public spaces of the modern age. This requires a big brush and a lot of ink.” “What I attempt to do,” he says, “is adapt ink painting to the way we view art today, while also recognising the art form’s inherent and traditional value.” Indeed, while the scale that this artist uses is an update on the art form, his subject choice extends an ancient national tradition. Lotus flowers represent the great leitmotif in Pan Gongkai’s works, as they do in Chinese art as a whole. The artist’s focus on these flowers, furthermore, allows him to channel a great personal belief in harmony; especially that which exists, or should exist, between people and nature.

In Chinese culture, the lotus flower is a symbol of purity, pushing as it does through muddy (and typically polluted) water and blossoming clean, white, pink and perfect. What then, is Pan Gongkai telling us with his lotus flowers? If we look at the painting above, the artist’s saturnine flora is far from ‘pure’ and in the inverted parallel universe that he has created, heavy lotus flowers presented in varying degrees of black and grey appear to have grown out of a white and crystalline lake. Despite this, each of the natural elements within this painting reside within a spellbound tranquillity and a mutual harmony. The aquatic brilliance that foregrounds the right half of the composition and extends on the left behind the flowers does not represent a ‘positive’ foil to the artist’s ‘negative’ midnight lotuses. Rather, a countervailing harmony exists between the monochromes of this composition, which emphasises Pan Gongkai’s particular attitude towards natural relationships. The strokes of the artist’s brush temper the stormy hues of the petals with a softness and a curvature that renders these dark monsters innocuous. Were we to step inside this work of art, we would experience a profound silence, perhaps broken by the occasional, gentle lap of lake water against lotus stalks.

Gentle, drooping giants, Pan Gongkai's flowers thus bring forward an ancient peace into the frenetic modern-day China.