Cai Guangbin

executed in 2006
signed with one seal of the artist on each panel

Chinese Ink Painting 2008. Book 1: Huantie Times, Zhongguo Yishu Zhuangtai Chubanshe, China, 2008, p. 484
Kuo, Jason C., Chinese Ink Painting Now, Distributed Art Publishers, New York, USA; Timezone 8, Hong Kong, China, 2010, p. 245

Overall in good condition. Framed size: 246.4 x 73.7 cm; 97 x 29 in. each
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Inspired by modern technology and the camera, Cai Guangbin combines cultural trends and his own visual experiences with a deeply rooted passion for figurative ink painting. Ever since he moved to Shanghai in 2001, Cai has focused on the rapid transformation of China's urban landscape and its impact on city life. His Window series (LOTS 558 & 577)—his most iconic and significant to date—is a voyeuristic confrontation with the anonymous faces of the Chinese city. Cai's strong vertical and horizontal frames remind the viewer of peering into apartment windows to catch still scenes of different lives.  Using the boneless (mogu) technique --painting without lines or contours--he displays masterful control of tone, light and shadow in his ink wash. The detail of each image is painterly in its expression, but the image captures the private moments of his subjects while sleeping, thinking or daydreaming, all with uncanny photorealistic realism.

Cai Guangbin holds two academic positions, as a professor of painting at the Shanghai Institute of Chinese Painting and a professor of aesthetics at East China Normal University of Art. He studied figurative drawing in the Chinese painting department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts and grew up in China's northernmost Heilongjiang province.

'Today, "ink" as form is what provides the personal concept behind my Window series.  Is the city the place where crowds gather and exist, where happiness and suffering exist simultaneously? Or is it just more oblique and difficult to describe?"¹

¹Cai Guangbin, "Artist Statement", Chinese Ink Painting 2008. Book 1: Huantie Times, Zhong Guo Yi Shu Zhuang Tai Chu Ban She, China, p. 484