Hanart TZ Gallery is honoured to host Luohan Tang Collection’s special selection of exquisite antique lacquer furniture together with Zheng Li’s distinctive shanshui (landscape) paintings at our current solo exhibition “Zheng Li : Reflections of the Classical Garden”.

Gardens mirror Chinese culture. In the gardens are embedded the poetry, painting, architecture, calligraphy and the many important concepts that reflect Chinese spirituality and philosophy. In their turn, the Chinese arts, including the high furniture art, are mirrors for gardens, from their landscapes to symbolic single elements such as rocks or flowers. A refined example in this exhibition, is a single small red cinnabar lacquer cabinet of the early Qing dynasty, where ladies of the gentry enjoy their leisure time in a luxuriant garden. On a pair of important cabinets of Kangxi period (1661-1722), scenes inlaid with precious materials and hardstones illustrate a scholar’s life in his garden.

Gardens are a place for man to experience not only his relationship with the Natural world, also with the Nature of his own Self. In Zheng Li’s wonderful paintings, we can imagine that it is the same scholar who reappears or disappears in the garden scenes: here he is waiting for his servant to prepare the tea, while the tea utensils lie forgotten on some garden stones. And on the opposite painting, he has perhaps just left his studio, where his books are waiting for him to return, neatly set on a deserted luohan daybed. The melancholy mood of the paintings does not become mired in regretful visions of a time long past. Like the scenes on the cabinets which have gently come down to us, they are proposals to those who would dare to give them a free, open-minded glance.

As much as Zheng Li’s work is powerfully rooted in the tradition which the lacquer pieces exemplify, his personal and contemporary style help to open a new vision in those antique furniture pieces, which speaks to the ambition of many and the dreams of others among our contemporaries.

This cooperation is a wonderful chance to show the communion between artists separated by centuries in a playful and elegant manner. Indeed, visiting this exhibition, you might find yourself locked in a multi-tiered game of reflections, mesmerized by a threatening idea of eternity and most importantly enjoy looking for the many echoes resonating between these walls.