The Artist of the Let's Gather in New Jersey: Chinese Contemporary Printmaking Exhibition Visited WPUNJ

10/26/2015 – 11/04/2015

Printmaking carries a spiritual charm that’s irreplaceably everlasting and distinctive. If one compares painting and Chinese painting as artworks created with a brush to mathematics, printmaking as artworks created with a matrix or a prepared screen undergoing a printing process can be likened to mathematical multiplication.

Printmaking is, in essence, painting with a plate. It’s an art form accessible to all in artistic and cultural exchanges. Be it intaglio, relief, planographic, or stencil, the artistic form is highly valued by artists and connoisseurs, East and West alike. Printmaking is also one of the sources and catalysts of innovation and evolution for modern visual arts, such as painting, sculpture, photography and, digital art. We, therefore, welcome more printmaking exhibitions.

The art of printmaking in China has made progress by leaps and bounds in the past decades and has drawn attention from the West. In 2013, the Chinese printmaking exhibit organized by the Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University and the Printmaking College of the National Art Institute at the South Graphic Association International Printmaking Conference in Wisconsin was one of the highlights of the conference, giving the attendees of more than 1,300 artists and scholars a heated topic of discussion.

This summer at the China Print Art Nomination of Painters born in 1950s, I had the privilege of meeting so many of the well-known artists and masters, such as: CAO Qiongde, CHEN Chao, JIANG Lu, LI Yanpeng, LOU Guirong, WANG Jianshan, YU Chengyou and ZHANG Minjie etc., and studied their works. I was so excited. We are honored to invite many of them here to this exhibition, to show their superb works of art to colleagues and art lovers of the New York metropolitan area and to share their experience as creative artists.

Zhiyuan Cong
Professor and Director
Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University