HANGZHOU, China, Aug. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Melodies in the Mountains − Cao Xiaoyang's Landscape Art Exhibition kicked off on July 30 at Jingci Art Museum in Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang Province. The exhibition showcases more than 50 pieces of works created by Prof. Cao Xiaoyang at the China Academy of Art (CAA) over the past 20 years using charcoal as the primary medium. The works, centered on the theme of landscape, are divided into three sections, namely, "Melodies in the Mountains", "Within Reach", and "The 24 Solar Terms".
Born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu in 1968, Prof. Cao is currently serving as Vice President of CAA and Vice Chairman of Zhejiang Artists Association. His works have won awards at major national and international art exhibitions and are included in the collections of National Museum of China, National Art Museum of China, Colby College Museum of Art, and other museums.
Prof. Cao has spent two decades using charcoal to create landscape paintings. He enjoys portraying streams, valleys, and echoing mountains, in particular the scenes of an approaching dawn, the gradual awakening of all things and the unpredictable transformation that follows − like shifting clouds on a mountain. Charcoal is one of the most stable and flexible mediums used in art. Long-time practices have allowed Prof. Cao to control the malleable, yet challenging medium with ease. "The charcoal comes from the forest. I'm returning it to the forest when I use it to paint the forest and its trees." Prof. Cao calls himself a "mountain's artist" because he loves mountains and paints them using charcoal.
CAA's President Gao Shiming believes that it is very challenging to give your paintings warmth and life by using charcoal. The key is not in the medium's quality as both brush and ink, but in the artist's ability to convey tonal qualities. Prof. Cao's use of charcoal renders his paintings devoid of the unique features and the myriad charming qualities of actual ink and brush while pushing them one step closer toward the real thing, achieving the marriage of tone and quality as well as scene and philosophy as expounded in Jing Hao's Record of Brush Methods.
The exhibition will last through October 8.
