Note: The exhibition will be extended until April 5, 2021.

From October 1^st  to April 5^th , 2021, Long Museum (West Bund) will introduce the exhibition “Ye Maozhong Art Exhibition,” curated by Mr. Liu Yiqian, the founder of Long Museum.

Ye Maozhong is a professor at Peking University, as well as a well-known brand marketing planner, art collector, and artist. Ye Maozhong’s art collection is dominated by modern Chinese masters such as Fu Baoshi, Xu Beihong, Huang Binhong, etc. His collection of modern paintings and calligraphy works is enormous and “incomparable nation-widely”, said by Liu Yiqian.

Ye Maozhong’s collection stems from his love for painting. When he was 4 years old, his father drew a boat on the back of a cigarette box, which triggered his interest in painting. He began to save money to buy and imitate comics after he went to elementary school. When he was in middle school, he was able to help school art teachers with Chinese landscape paintings and flower-and-bird paintings. Ye Maozhong was admitted to the local cultural center in Taizhou, and learned art from Wu Junsheng, a student of Fu Baoshi. Ye Maozhong got into Design for Stage major at Jiangsu School of Theater Arts, and his professor Tai Qiyou was also a student of Fu Baoshi.

Influenced by the art style of his professors and Fu Baoshi, Ye Maozhong likes to create his painting using the method of “Bao Shicun.” His proficiency in the use of “Bao Shicun” makes his imitations extremely close to the original artworks. However, Ye Maozhong did not only imitate Fu Baoshi’s paintings but also paintings from Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, Wang Meng, and Wang Gongwang. By doing so, he mastered the basics of brush and ink, and tried to break through the gap between the ancients and himself.

As said by Ye Maozhong, “I’ve always been fascinated with the spiritual temperament of Song and Yuan Dynasty’s paintings. Paintings of Song Dynasty showing cares to natural, and focusing on the specification of ink created by painters; Paintings from Yuan Dynasty is about my self-spiritual caring, presenting the height of ink formed by calligraphy and painting technically. Even thou can’t reach the caring spiritual it had shown to natural and spiritual, but still yearn for it.” In recent years, Ye Maozhong has started to create more sketch art.

This exhibition displays around a hundred and fifty artworks by Ye Maozhong, divided into four sections: Gratitude for Painting, Setting Sail, Learning from the Good Fortune, and Metting the Sages. The exhibition aims to allow the audience to not only have a comprehensive view of the artist but also his creative trajectory of various types of painting such as western paintings, imitations,  and sketch art. Viewers will be able to fully understand Ye Maozhong— a person who wanders in the world of ink and art.

As the exhibition opens, the album of the same name will be released simultaneously, bringing an unique way of reading that’s different from the exhibition, The album is prefaced by the curator Liu Yiqian and also includes an introduction by Ye Maozhong, a commentary by Tang Zheming, and an enormous of artworks by Ye Maozhong.