SHI ZHIYING:The Infinite Lawn

SHI ZHIYING 石至莹, The Infinite Lawn 无垠的草坪, 2012, Oil on canvas 布面油画, 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 inches; 200 x 300 cm

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai presents the solo exhibition The Infinite Lawn by Shanghai-based artist Shi Zhiying, opened May 26 and continuing through July 26, 2012. This is the artist’s debut exhibition at the gallery.

Known for her stark black and white paintings depicting vast views of the sea, endless landscapes of scattered rocks, traditional sand gardens and intricate blades of grass, Shi’s paintings are at once deeply visceral and contemplative. “I wish to face things quietly, attentively” the artist has stated, “I treat painting [and objects] sincerely; I am communicating with them…."

The exhibition features Shi Zhiying’s recent project Palomar, a set of 30 watercolor and ink works inspired by the book Mr. Palomar by Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985). The novel’s central character, whose name also evokes that of a famous observatory, continuously makes philosophical observations and speculations about the world around him—a wave, the rays of the sun, a pair of turtles, a sand garden—all leading to ruminations on the nature of things and Being towards the universal. Each of Shi’s 27 works corresponds to a single chapter.

The centerpiece to the exhibition, The Infinite Lawn, is a large scale painting which also refers to one of the novel’s key chapters. The Grass painting series was started in 2010. As in Shi’s earlier seascape paintings or her recent Mars and Sand series, grass is one of the motifs the artist keeps returning to, eliminating all that is inessential and to further distill its essential characteristic. Or, as Shi Zhiying might ask, “Are any two blades of grass ever alike?”

Shi Zhiying (born in Shanghai, 1979) graduated from the Oil Painting Department, Shanghai University Fine Arts College. In 2009, Shi Zhiying was the subject of a major solo exhibition From The Pacific Ocean to the High Seas at Ullens Center of Contemporary Art in Beijing. Her work has been featured in distinguished group exhibitions, including 2011 N Minutes Video Art Festival, Shanghai, China; 2011 Decade of the Rabbit, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia; 2011 DAS ICH IM ANDEREN, Stiftung Mercator, Essen, Germany; 2010 Double Act – 2010 Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Red Town Warehouse, Shanghai; 2010 Centennial Celebration of Women in Art, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, and a solo exhibition at White Space in Beijing in 2010. She currently works and lives in Shanghai.