The Chinese Way: A Dialogue featuring two of Shanghai’s most important mid-career artists exhibition opens at Eastlink Gallery on 2007.12.8 - 2008.1.8. He Saibang’s and Qin Yifeng’s paintings and installations address the complex relations between East and West. Both explore western concepts of modernism and combine their finding with their Chinese classical background. The results are a striking illustration of highly individual aesthetics, conspicuously unique amongst current Chinese art.He Saibang’s work invokes a powerful sense of harmony and peace, a testimony to a life deeply influenced by Buddhist-Taoist culture. Using traditional materials such as ink wash on Xuan paper, He Saibang picks modern motifs such as razors and toothpaste to produce his achingly delicate images. His work is precise and minimalist, creating objects of fascination and beauty by reducing them to the smallest number of colour, value, shape, line and texture. Meanwhile the line forms the base of Qin Yifeng’s work. This fundamental unit in Chinese calligraphy takes on a new life as the artist experiments with aspects of Abstract Expressionism. He plays with these ideas, overlying the vertical stripes with curvy horizontal lines, in a meditation of flourish and repetition. As his ideas evolve he moves away from the canvas into the space surrounding him. In traditional Chinese painting the space is as important as the object and Qin Yifeng addresses this aspect in his new installation works.