Footnotes

秦風（1961年生） 無題 水墨、茶、咖啡絲棉紙 鏡框 2006年作

Provenance: a European private collection, acquired directly from the artist in Beijing in 2006

來源： 歐洲私人收藏，於2006年在北京直接從藝術家處獲得

Born in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 1961, Qin Feng is an iconoclastic artist who is actively involved in China's avant-garde art movement. Being an eclectic ink artist, Qin Feng is committed to integrating Eastern and Western styles. Xinjiang, Berlin, Boston, and Beijing, places the artist calls home, infused his artwork with a global perspective that led him to a bold and significant artistic path - extending the tradition of classical Chinese ink painting and calligraphy.

From 1996 to 1999, Qin taught at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he further explored the possibility of the fusion of Western modernism and traditional Chinese ink. He used tea and coffee, two different beverages from the East and the West, to render multiple layers on xuan paper, which serves as a metaphor of the merge between the two cultures. The artist uses ink as the medium and calligraphy as the form, and also adopts smooth yet dry brushstrokes, creating seemingly powerful traditional calligraphy that skilfully demonstrates the freedom and agility in abstract expressionism, resulting in ink pieces that connect the past and the present. In the dynamic portrayal of West Wind/East Water, Qin simultaneously expresses the rhythm of leisure and the hysteria and explosiveness of ink brushstrokes, adding tension to the image while charging the work with contemporary vitality and poetic quality.

Qin Feng's work can be found in several important and prestigious museums and collections globally, including the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Getty Museum, USA; the Museum of Fine Art, Boston; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Jerry Yang collection.

See a related painting by Qin Feng, 'West Wind East Water', also with ink, coffee and tea, which was sold at Bonhams London 17 May 2023, lot 392.