Born in Shanghai in 1948. Currently resides in San Francisco. Trained in Shanghai, with Zhang Chongren; San Francisco Institute of Art.
Li Huayi’s work is often compared with the monumental landscape paintings of the Northern Song dynasty, so he might have been expected to choose a Northern Song landscape for this project. Instead, the artist chose to respond to Chen Rong’s Nine Dragons, the preeminent Chinese dragon painting in existence and one of the MFA’s great treasures.
Li Huayi reinterprets the swirling, contorted forms of the dragons in Chen Rong’s work as landscape elements—twisted pines, craggy rocks, and murky mist. He has designed a new compositional format for Fresh Ink highlighting a central hanging scroll against a six-panel screen where his initial splashy strokes are left unfinished.
Dragons Hidden in Mountain Ridges, ink on paper, 2009
Section of Chen Rong (active 13th century), Nine Dragons, ink and traces of red on paper, dated 1244
Central Hanging Scroll, Dragons Hidden in Mountain Ridges
