YIYUN ART | A Decade On, Picking Up the Brush Again
Ten years is long enough for a founding intention to grow into a firm conviction.
In 2016, YIYUN ART began with a focus on Eastern culture and art. Over the past decade, through exhibitions, collecting, research and conversations with artists across generations, we have moved between tradition and the contemporary, exploring the value and potential of Eastern art.
Ten years on, we are more certain than ever that the aesthetic thinking at the heart of Eastern art is more than a valuable cultural legacy. It has the depth to keep growing and a future still unfolding.
Western art speaks of the ‘figurative’ and the ‘abstract’. Eastern art neither clings to form nor abandons it. With a few strokes of brush and ink, it holds boundless imagination and spirit. A landscape has form, yet it is more than a landscape. Brushwork leaves visible marks, yet it conveys a spirit and mood that go beyond the image itself. This distinctive beauty of ‘yixiang’, the image infused with meaning, is endlessly captivating.
Calligraphy is one of the purest expressions of this aesthetic. It builds form through line and conveys spirit through ink. Guided by the principle of ‘treating the blank space as ink’, it creates its own rhythm and space through the interplay of black and white, dark and light, density and openness. A few strokes can evoke a vast world, and a small sheet can hold the breadth of heaven and earth.
To mark our tenth anniversary, we invited artist LIU XIN to write the gallery’s name, '異雲書屋', by hand, and we have adopted this calligraphy as YIYUN ART’s new visual identity. More than a change of form, it affirms what we have pursued over the past decade and looks ahead to what comes next. We treasure tradition but are not bound by it. We engage with the contemporary while seeking new vitality in our cultural roots.
Ten years ago, we set out from Eastern art. Ten years later, we are more convinced than ever of the value of this path. Carrying this conviction forward, YIYUN ART will continue on its way.
YIYUN ART 10th Anniversary | Picking Up the Brush Again