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M+, Hong Kong, © Li Huasheng
Li Huasheng 李華生
9877
1998
Li Huasheng created propaganda paintings during the Cultural Revolution but maintained a private practice of ink painting throughout his career. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was lauded as a neo-literati painter for his wild and expressive brushwork. By 1998, he had abandoned representational forms for an innovative practice of repetitive mark making on paper. 9877 is one of Li’s initial forays into this conceptual territory. Freehand dots and lines became his primary vocabulary, and the resulting grids offer a chronicle of the artist’s meditative state. They seem impenetrable when seen from a distance, but up close they reveal Li’s focused attention and the minute fluctuations of his energy. This notion—that the artist’s spirit can be transferred to the paper—is inseparable from traditional literati painting.
Repetitive but not mechanical, each dot is conceived of as a stroke and, linked together, the dots form a textile-like surface. The overwhelming size of the paper relative to the brush in 9877 made completing the work a physically demanding task. This slow painting process contrasts with the speed of expressive brush movements evident in Li’s earlier work. With his new practice, he began titling his paintings with the date of their completion; 9877 was finished on 7 July 1998.
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