Classical Chinese ink painting features perfect landscapes, with ideal mountains and trees. But young innovators paint what is real, they're a bit like the impressionists, writes Zhou Tao.Although the Chinese contemporary art market is hot, China's most classical art form, ink-wash painting, is virtually absent from the popular field.The exhibition "Upstream" at 1918 Art Space, one of the city's avant-garde galleries, is trying to demonstrate that Chinese ink painting is still here - and it's by no means too traditional to be avant-garde.Young landscape painters are innovating from the classical form - paintings of the "idea" of a mountain, or an "ideal" mountain - to painting mountains as they "really" are, rough, imperfect, filled with light and shadow. They even use traditional techniques for urban landscapes, a shocking notion to the classical painters.Gallery owner Zhao Yonggang had seemed to prefer modern works throughout his years of gallery running. The works of a few Chinese artists for the Venice Biennale have been exhibited.This time, however, Zhao decided to break from tradition after talking with artist Fu Xuming, curator of this show and one of its 10 artists.Fu is a talkative and articulate guy, that's why he made the case for classical ink painting on behalf of the others. Fu's explanation provides much more than what just "meets the eye."These paintings might seem ordinary - they are the same familiar black ink strokes on white rice paper depicting human figures, landscapes and still-lifes. However, they represent huge innovative efforts by Chinese artists, ever since early 20th century until today.They deal with what is "real," not the perfect image or ideal."The hot Chinese art market, say, the auction records at London or New York, is an 'explicit' market," says Fu. "However, there is always a huge 'implicit' domestic market for traditional Chinese paintings. That's how numerous painters, from masters to not-so-good ones, make a good living."Fu knows quite a lot of inside stories from art business circles because his identity as an artist is just his "alter ego" - his former occupation is that of a journalist for a major economic newspaper in Beijing."I do have connections with these big bosses," says Fu. "For example, one boss, with an annual income of 25 million yuan (US$3.4 million), spends 2.5 million every year on traditional Chinese paintings. That's just one example."These old-fashioned people prefer conventionally beautiful paintings so they never need to go to auction houses for avant-garde stuff. They buy without talking about it or even being noticed."But the artists in this exhibition, including Fu, are not just craftsmen producing decorative art for big shots. They are working hard, just like other ambitious Chinese artists, trying to introduce innovate elements to the classical art form in terms of content, material and forms."The innovation started in the early 20th century," says Fu. "When the first students studying abroad got back to China, they brought the Western system of art and tried localizing it.In the mid-20th century, however, such innovation and localization in China were interrupted for political and ideological reasons. "It was not until the middle 1980s that the really groundbreaking movements started."In China, there is a saying "no deconstruction, no establishment." The so-called New Wave generation in 1980s was doing the job of deconstruction and their slogan was "don't work conventionally like our ancestors.""These people were mostly born in 1960s and they accomplished their mission of deconstruction," says Fu. "I was born in early 1970s and I think it's time I and my peers take over and do the rest of the job to establish new Chinese ink painting."However, some viewers say there's little innovation in these paintings. "Well, it's never easy," Fu says, "Take a quick look at the West and see what they have gone through - the similarity explains a lot."Let us make a metaphor - traditional Chinese ink paintings are like classical European oil painting before middle 19th century. The Chinese artists who are now making efforts to make a change are like the European Impressionists at that time. When looking back, there seems not that much difference in the eyes of an ordinary viewer, but it took generations of artists to make the change."It's very true that the slightest change in art may take generations of artists to accomplish, and, some small and seemingly absurd things could be shocking in their context at that time.Western artists have gone so far that Marcel Duchamp has made us believe anything can be art, Lucio Fontana claims there's nothing worth painting and Joseph Beuys has made us believe everyone of us can be an artist. So, the innovation in classical Chinese ink paintings is comparatively slight and there will be much more scope for it.