Exhibition View
Curated by Tan Shengguang, a senior curator of the Tsinghua University Art Museum, "On Tao, Tracing the Origin: The Art of Xu Lei" is organized by the Shenzhen Art Museum and co-organized by the YING Center for Contemporary Art. The exhibition showcases the most important works from various periods of Xu Lei's career, marking his first large-scale thematic exhibition with a retrospective nature in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area.
Exhibition View
Since the 1980s, within the diverse landscape of contemporary Chinese art, Xu Lei’s artistic practice has consistently exhibited a distinctive philosophical depth. His work is grounded in the dialogue between tradition and modernity, reconstructing the relationship between history and the present through visual language. Curator Tan Shengguang has dissected the layered structure of Xu Lei's work, revealing how the artist reinterprets the modern fate of traditional aesthetics through his spiritual trajectory. Titled "On Tao, Tracing the Origin", the exhibition traces the spiritual lineage of Chinese classical aesthetics through Xu Lei’s four-decade-long artistic journey. By invoking the five dimensions of literary creation articulated in Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons) — such as tixing (style and nature), shensi (spiritual thought), yinxiu (the recondite and the conspicuous), rongcai (editing of ideas), and tongbian (continuity and renovation) — the exhibition presents Xu Lei’s ongoing engagement with inheritance, transformation, and reinvention of Chinese classical aesthetics and its great artistic tradition.
Xu Lei, Caged Poetry, 1993. Ink and color on paper, 63×51cm.
Xu Lei, Dark, 1994. Ink and color on paper, 58×46cm.
Xu Lei, Wandering in the Night, 1995. Ink and color on paper, 65×103cm.
Xu Lei, A City of Geckos, 1998. Ink and color on paper, 66×145cm.
Xu Lei, An Illusory Horse, 2001. Ink and color on paper, 103×65cm.
Notably, Tan Shengguang astutely identifies the wisdom of rongcai in Xu Lei’s artistic practice: he employs the philosophy of Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) to navigate the aesthetic tensions between East and West, embedding a profound dialectical logic within the overlap of temporal and spatial languages. Xu Lei does not perceive ancient art as a static heritage but rather as a fluid structure. Through continuous deconstruction and reconfiguration, he strips away the superficial textures of cultural symbols, distilling a shared cognitive framework and revealing a universal sculptural will, which ultimately intertwines into a new network of meaning within his compositions.
Xu Lei, The End of the World, 132×325cm, Ink and color on paper, 2009.
Xu Lei, Interact Mountains No.1, 2017. Ink and color on paper, 61.5×210cm.
Xu Lei, Interact Mountains No.2, 2017. Ink and color on paper, 61.5×204cm.
Xu Lei, Interact Shapes No.4, 2019. Ink and color on silk, 112×143cm.
Xu Lei, Wave on the Stone, 2019. Ink and color on silk, 99×156cm.
Furthermore, Tan Shengguang points out that Xu Lei’s art ultimately engages with a grander proposition: how can tradition be reborn within modernity? In Xu Lei’s practice, tongbian is not merely a reconciliation of past and present, but rather a thorough creative transformation. By forging a ‘synchronic structure of past and present’, he opens up new spiritual dimensions, blending the rigorous discipline of Tang and Song court paintings, the order of Persian miniatures, and the solemn forms of medieval iconography, into a transcultural, global ‘visual language’.
Xu Lei, A Double Screen of the World, 2021-2022. Ink and color on silk, 220×300cm (painting size).
Xu Lei, The Moon over the River on a Spring Night, 2023. Ink and color on paper, 65×120cm.
Xu Lei, The Distance to the Moon, 2023. Ink and color on paper, 56×113cm.
Xu Lei, Hippocrate's Theorem, 180×270cm, Ink and color on silk, 2022.
Xu Lei, Sickle Moon Theorem, 2024-2025. 180x268cm.
Through his personal practice and the following generation of artists who have embraced the paradigm he has pioneered, Xu Lei has demonstrated what Tan Shengguang describes as ‘the eternity of tradition lies in its ceaseless rebirth’. Tan Shengguang’s research serves as a prism, refracting Xu Lei’s artistic practice into a broader intellectual spectrum. Within the tension between ‘revival’ and ‘innovation’, Xu Lei’s art resembles an ancient tree sprouting new branches — its roots deeply embedded in the fertile soil of Chinese artistic tradition, while its foliage reaches toward Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinths and Samuel Beckett’s absurdity. In the dislocation and suturing of time and space, tradition is no longer a burden but a pair of weightless wings, lifting modern individuals over the fractures of culture.
Xu Lei, Leonardo da Vinci and the Dragon No.2, 2024. Ink and color on silk, 48x85cm.
Xu Lei, Leonardo da Vinci and the Dragon No.3, 2024. Ink and color on silk, 48x85cm.
Xu Lei, Flowers in the Mirror No.9, 2024. Ink and color on paper, 45x81cm.
Xu Lei, Cloud World, 2024-2025. Ink and color on silk, 153x530cm.
Xu Lei, Eight Views, 2024-2025. Ink and color on paper, 82x45cm.
The exhibition will run until June 15, 2025. During this period, a research catalogue under the same title will be published, accompanied by a series of academic events.
Exhibition View
About the Artist
Xu Lei, born in 1963 in Jiangsu Province, Professor of Chinese National Academy of Arts. Vice President of China Hue Art Association. He first enrolled at the Nanjing University of the Arts in 1980 and majored in traditional Chinese painting, participated in the ’85 New Wave Art Movement upon graduation, and took part in the China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition in 1989. Since then, Xu’s art practice has been dedicated to transforming traditional Chinese painting with modernist approaches, revivingits aestheticsin new visual iterations, using styles for compelling impact. He adopts installation and video as creative media to extend his painting concepts, advocating the translation of traditional Chinese cultural "principles" into contemporary visual perception and building connections to the future with a genealogy of art historical knowledge.
Xu Lei has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the National Museum of China; Suzhou Museum; Today Art Museum, Beijing;Nanchizi Museum, Beijing; Marlborough Gallery (New York/Madrid), and art galleries in San Francisco, London, and Hong Kong. He has participated in major group exhibitions, including China 5000 Years: Innovation and Transformation in the Arts, Guggenheim Museum, New York; Chinese Pavilion at the 12th Venice Biennale of Architecture; Chinese Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. His works are in the permanent collection of the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum, the Suzhou Museum, and M+ in Hong Kong.
About the Curator
Tan Shengguang, a senior curator and head of the Academic Department at the Tsinghua University Art Museum. He earned his Ph.D. from the Institute for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University, where he studied under the renowned Chinese art and cultural historian Professor Wen C. Fong. He has previously worked at the Jiangsu Traditional Chinese Painting Institute and the Institute of Cultural Heritage at Zhejiang University and has held research positions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. His research focuses on Chinese painting and calligraphy, Chinese art history, and the history of cultural exchanges between Eastern and Western civilizations. He has published over 30 academic papers in leading journals such as Literary & Art Studies and Palace Museum Journal. Several of his monographs have been published by Zhonghua Book Company and Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House. His edited work Nine Lectures on the Chinese Art History by Wen C. Fong won the 2016 ‘Good Book of China’ award.
He has curated a series of major exhibitions, including Utensils and Ornaments Endlessly Fine: National Treasures from Afghanistan at the Cultural Crossroads of East and West (2019), Everlasting Like The Heavens: The Cultures and Arts of the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang (2019), Forests and Streams Resplendently Clear: Reflecting and Representing Nature in Chinese Painting (2021), Splendor of Huaxia: The Essence of Shanxi's Ancient Civilization (2021), Marvelous Colors, Manifold Forms: Cultural Exchanges in Glass Art among the Ancient East and West (2022), A Sense for Beauty Across Two Countries: Cultural Exchanges Between Japan and China During the Han and Tang Dynasties (2022), The Craft of Metalwork: Cultural Exchanges and Mutual Learning in Early Metallurgy across the Eurasian Continent (2023), The Evolution of Rites in the East: The Essence of Shandong's Ancient Civilization (2023), The Craft of Modeling Clay: Cultural Exchanges in Ceramic Art among the Ancient East and West (2024), Heartland of Zhongguo: The Essence of Central Plains' Ancient Civilization (2025), Cosmic Embrace: Liu Kuo-sung’s Experimentation as Method (2025), and Dancing with the Great Form: The Art of Yu Youhan (2025). The exhibitions he curated have received accolades such as the nomination for Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s National Art Museum Excellent Exhibition (2019), and awards such as the Top Ten Excellent Exhibitions of Beijing Museums (2021), and the National Special Recognition Award for Museum Exhibitions (2023).
About the Exhibition
On Tao, Tracing the Origin: The Art of Xu Lei
Curator: Tan Shengguang
Dates: March 25 – June 15, 2025
Venue: Hall 1& 2, 1F, Shenzhen Art Museum
Organizer: Shenzhen Art Museum
Co-organizer: YING Center For Contemporary Art
Courtesy of the Artist and Shenzhen Art Museum.
