Jia Fangzhou

　　Dear Nan Qi,  I must apologise for neglecting you and your works recently.  Over the past three years, you have clearly applied yourself with great discipline, and I have been mostly concerned with my website, symposia and other transactional work.  My main reason for this late response to your letter is that I had not seen your new works yet.  Now that I have personally witnessed the great leaps you have made, I can take the time to respond.  On visiting your studio and seeing the positive results of your continuous experimentation with and exploration of ink painting, I was overwhelmed and touched by your works.  Your efforts and hard application over the past few years was plain to see.  The development of Chinese ink painting can be discussed along the lines of two parallel philosophical and artistic evolutionary paths: tao and qi.  Qi is most succinctly encapsulated in the stroke style and understanding of ink and wash flow introduced by Tang Dynasty literati painter and poet Wang Wei, whose "five-colours" approach to painting eventually replaced the "ode to colour" style, which followed the principle that painting is an extension of writing poetry. Tao relates to the lines or "paths" created by brushstrokes.  Through one thousand years of art history between Wang Wei and today's ink painters, brush and ink styles have developed richly; however, your "Nan dot" has breached a new frontier in ink technique.  This one dot has changed ink painting completely.  As the well-known Ming dynasty landscape painter Shi Tao has said, "one brush stroke contains myriad meanings and connotations, a most concise and elegant method of expressing emotions and concepts…an inspired artist uses the brush eloquently, and this principle of elegance pervades everything.  The possibilities are endless, and yet the work created is perfectly logical".  From an ontological perspective, your dots can be compared to a full stop.  Although his "fingerprint" paintings are original, Zhang Yu has left behind the unique charm of ink painting itself by abandoning brushstrokes.  In comparison, you are not only producing an original style, but also remaining faithful to the pure language of ink.  The ancients' application of "multi-coloured ink", the use of pure ink to express colours, allowed us to imagine "colours" in each layer of shaded ink and wash.  In contrast, you have applied dots in three colours to compose some of your works, and you have realised in your paintings the idea that ink is colour, and that colour is ink, unifying ink and colour.  This is another contribution you have made to ink painting.  Liu Xiaochun chose well in naming your next style "eerie 3D", which requires a great deal of intuition to fully grasp.  In order to properly evaluate these works, I feel that one would need to expound on graphic design theory and the construction of the three-dimensional graphics.  For the moment, I will refrain from exploring this series of paintings, as I have not yet had the time to read Ji Shaofeng's article on the subject.  Fortunately, your next exhibition of these works is in September, so I still have some time to think on the matter.  To finish, I think you make an appropriate comparison between yourself and the oil vendor in Ming dynasty writer Feng Menglong's popular tale, The Oil Vendor and the Courtesan.  His skill in pouring oil from a tall jar into a tiny vessel attracted a beautiful courtesan despite his humble roots, and his abilities and personal charm allowed him to succeed and defeat his more illustrious love rivals.  In the same way, your skill and artistic imagination have brought to to the forefront of Chinese ink painting, and I am confident that you, too, will conquer the heart of your courtesan!  My very best wishes to you.  Jia Fangzhou April 23rd 2011 Contemporary Chinese Art Critic Director of the New Chinese Ink Painting Institue