林苒：时空旅行者

I'm a time traveler. However, just like you, I could neither see miles away, nor see the ends of the day. What I can do is to measure the land step by step, expanding the horizons till the distant place is clear. What I can do is to break the shackles and free myself through art, step by step.— Lin Ran我是一个时空旅行者。然而，和你一样，我看不了几公里之外，也看不到长日的尽头。我只能一程一程，去丈量脚下，去延伸视野，直至辽阔深明。我只能一段一段，用艺术，去解开羁绊，松开桎梏，许给自己自由。—-林苒Young artist Lin Ran graduated from École nationalle Supérieure des arts de Cergy-paris and École Supérieure d'Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen with master degree in new media art. Her works have been collected by many important public institutions and private collectors at home and abroad. She has been invited to several international art exhibitions around the world.As an artist who received art training in China and continued education in France under the systematic instruction of European philosophy and aesthetics, Lin Ran’s work reflected her experience, sense of identity and values to certain extents. Lin’s diverse background make it difficult to summarise or label her.Lin ran is a traveler, an eternal stranger, exploring from city to city and traveling from country to country. With the experience of visiting over 60 countries and all the five continents, Lin looks at China from the perspective of a stranger. She is not trapped by nostalgia during the travelling, looking for the difference between the East and the West, while reflecting on the conflict of eastern identity in the Western context. From a traveler’s perspective, she observes the fascinating and the absurd, the amusing and the bizarre, the poetic and the romantic.Influenced by Chinese traditional culture and eastern aesthetics since childhood, Lin has received modern art education in domestic college, and contacted the European art system in France in the later years. These experiences made Lin a wandering Asian artist in the western world. She is more like a detached nomad with her own unique perspective. She believes that art makes people face in front of their own dilemmas.Her works embody a spirit of independent and prudent liberalism. Speculative liberalism, on the one hand, allows artists to discuss issues more independently and calmly, but on the other hand, complex and diverse works of art could often be less eye-catching than simple symbols. But Lin took the risk of being herself when it comes to art.This exhibition presented 32 paintings influenced by the literati painting of the Song Dynasty, showing the possibility of the installations that Lin had been exploring for a long time. She re-created 10 pieces antiques that she collected from all over the world. An18th century tin drinker from Norway, silver plates from France, compasses from the maritime era of Tanzania, Africa, old brass kitchens from Greece, rhino horns from Europe Spoons, driftwood from the beaches of Taiwan, all the artefacts have been transformed into interesting and philosophical contemporary works of art. In this space, the East and the West blend perfectly. Lin addresses the four most important elements of the literati painting of the Song Dynasty: character,Knowledge, talent and thought, with these four, can be completed. This echos with the saying by the art historian E.H. Gombrich that ‘There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.’                                                                                                                                               — Excerpt from article Lin Ran: A Nomad and A Stranger by the art critic and curator Liao Liao