Ding Yi

Private Collection, Shanghai

Beijing, China Art Archives & Warehouse, Concepts, Colors and Passions, July 3 - August 15, 1999
Shanghai Changning Art and Cultural Center, Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, 1997

This work is in a very good condition overall. The canvas might benefit from restretching but, otherwise, there are no visible condition problems. The work was not examined under UV light.
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Among Chinese contemporary painters, Shanghai-based Ding Yi is one of the few to pursue an overtly abstract vocabulary—and he is unquestionably abstraction's finest practitioner.  And yet as the titles of Ding's paintings suggest, his abstraction is one of "appearances."  For while the surfaces of Ding's works are indeed abstract—and dazzling in their grid-like patterns and complicated effects—his oeuvre is made up of the simple repetition of cross forms, a reductive mark-making process of an almost Zen-like character.  That is, the lengthy process of creating such paintings, one stroke at a time, with the logic of the whole composition in mind, approaches a meditative practice that seems anachronistic in the fast-paced world of developing Shanghai that Ding Yi inhabits.

Born in Shanghai in 1962 and trained at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Institute and the Fine Arts Department at Shanghai University (graduating in 1983 and 1990, respectively), Ding Yi has witnessed the radical transformations of this contemporary megapolis for more than four decades.  His signature style, however, has been remarkably consistent since he first adopted it in the late 1980's, as though it were his private refuge from the ever-changing world.  Given the self-imposed confines of his practice, Ding's oeuvre is all the more impressive for the extensive range of surface qualities and emotional expression he is able to generate.

Appearance of Crosses 1996-38 (1996) is a comparatively subdued painting, with a predominately neutral but decidedly graphic tonal character.  On first glance the work is best described as a hand-drawn, irregular grid of yellow lines with black outlines and black interstitial dashes on a white ground; viewed as a whole, the ground itself is irregular in some areas, the conglomeration of black marks and under-painting more pronounced in some regions than others.  Unlike many of Ding Yi's works, which feature a bright tartan fabric as their support, 1996-38 is a work on beige canvas, which remains visible at the outer edges.  But here at the edges and upon closer observation, one discovers the diversity of surface colors that stride across the picture as a whole:  a grid of green at right angles to the support seems to have been the first layer applied, followed by a grid of orange superimposed diagonally, though one can't be sure as the colors mix and mingle.  But these secondary colors appear across the painting's surface, even as the black, white and yellow assert their presence from above.  In the color language of painting, red, blue and yellow are the primaries, and green, yellow and violet their respective secondaries.  In contrast to the black and white grids of Piet Mondrian, in which blocks of primary colors play leading roles, here the predominant yellow is actually the odd man out (there is no red or yellow), with the two uncomplimentary secondary colors playing what is, indeed, a subsidiary role (there is no violet).  It is this unusual, even witty color combination, shot through with the graphic clarity of black on white, that lends to the painting its unique tone.

Ding Yi is capable of conveying the chaos of a busy intersection, the flashing neon lights of a bustling commercial district, the vibrant energy of a spring in full bloom, or the tomb-like depths of a forbidding sea—all with his repetitive × and + marks.  In 1996-38, however, one senses amidst the surface complexities and delicate undulations of the grid, the change of a season from autumn to winter and the quietude of a languorous afternoon of reflection.  Stroke by stroke, Ding Yi builds a self-contained world that is more than it appears to be, and 1996-38 is one in which we, too, may take refuge.