LAO TONGLI

Lao Tongli is a contemporary artist working in early gongbi or “meticulous brush” painting technique—a tradition which can trace its roots to Imperial painting of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and religious mural painting dating as far back as the the Six Dynasties period (220–589). Unlike China’s literati painting tradition which emphasized landscape painting in ink monochrome, gongbi painting often depicted moral, spiritual and religious narratives using vibrant mineral pigments such as azurite, malachite, lapis lazuli, lead, cobalt and cinnabar. Having entered China as early as the 3^rd Century along the Silk Road from Central Asia, gongbi painting facilitated cross-cultural artistic exchange between China, Central Asia, the Middle East and perhaps even Europe over the ensuing millennia. As a result, gongbi painting shares many of the same materials and techniques found in European fresco painting, Persian or South Asian miniature painting and Tibetan thanka painting. Having mastered gongbi painting methods at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Lao Tongli spent two years, following his graduation in 2006, working in France and Germany for international contemporary artist Yang Jiechang, himself a master of gongbi painting technique. There he developed a novel approach to gongbi painting that reformulates both the technique and the visual semiotics of this early transnational art form for use in our international, contemporary art discourse today.

Text courtesy INKstudio.