Lizhi Jin, Peasants Wrestling and at Rest, 2008
Lizhi Ji, the young, celebrated painter from Tianjin was recently in Paris attending the opening of La Nouvelle Dialectique Chinoise, an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at Gallerie Claude Beaudoin. I’ve known Ji for the past few years, ever since I started performing at the biennial Gu Gung Arts Festival in Beijing. I’ve always admired his work.
His new series of monumental paintings (the largest measures 5 x 6 metres) combining encaustic, tar and white chalk are truly dazzling. Though they share a suspicious affinity to David Schoffman’s Annunciation pieces, both artists claim complete ignorance of each other's work.
Dr. Sonya Hesse, Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory at UNLV and author of the definitive Lizhi Ji and the Captive Mind (Dobrus Press, 2007), insists that while Schoffman shares many of the new Chinese artistic sensibilities, he does so merely to capitalize on its recent commercial currency. Ji’s biting depictions of political displacement are authentically rooted in his family history during the Cultural Revolution, while Schoffman is merely rehashing tired expressionistic idioms and outdated formalism.
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