Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Fu Xiaotong Draws Chinese Landscapes with Thousands of Pinholes

As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Chinese artists sought permanence within nature, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from real world chaos. Following in the footsteps of her creative heritage, Beijing based artist Fu Xiaotong updates traditional Chinese landscape painting with a modern twist. Using only a tiny needle, she meticulously pierces thousands of pinholes into large sheets of Xuan paper in a repetitive manner similar to Pointillism. It's difficult to appreciate the scale and detail of her work through these images alone, some measuring larger than Xiaotong herself, who stands on a tall ladder to reach the peaks of waves and mountain tops that each picture depicts.

As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Chinese artists sought permanence within nature, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from real world chaos. Following in the footsteps of her creative heritage, Beijing based artist Fu Xiaotong updates traditional Chinese landscape painting with a modern twist. Using only a tiny needle, she meticulously pierces thousands of pinholes into large sheets of Xuan paper in a repetitive manner similar to Pointillism. It’s difficult to appreciate the scale and detail of her work through these images alone, some measuring larger than Xiaotong herself, who stands on a tall ladder to reach the peaks of waves and mountain tops that each picture depicts. She titles each “drawing” with the number of pinpricks it took to create it; “713,700 Pinpricks”, depicts a majestic snowy topped mountain with rugged peaks, a motif that plays a prominent role in Chinese art. Mountains not only offer a life in seclusion, devoid of restraints, but they also represent nature’s sheer power and grandeur. By evoking this antique style, Xiaotong identifies herself with the values associated with the old masters. Her work is no longer about the description of the visible world; it becomes a means of conveying the inner landscape of her heart and mind. She is currently exhibiting new works in “Land of Serenity”, on view at Chambers Fine Art in New York through March 26th, 2016.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Lucila Biscione creates surreal scenes with paper, ink, and pencil, with lush backdrops and roaming creatures. The Buenos Aires-born, Berlin-based “papercut" artist primarily uses muted tones in the works shown here, adding to worlds that appear either ancient and lived-in—further underscoring their fairytale quality.
Kirk Fanelly's recent, vibrant works are constructed with inlaid cut paper, offering a glimpse at the Western experience through the artist’s intricate process. This mode of creation is a fairly recent development for the artist, who previously mixed the surreal and the everyday in oil paintings.
Canada based, Macau born artist Ann Hoi breathes a sense of life in her meticulous and extraordinary paper sculptures. There are usually monochromatic, portraying mysterious hooded figures, young children in the company of bizarre creatures, and small deformed bodies, each as fanciful as they are unsettling. Since graduating from Ontario College of Art and Design University, Hoi has completed only a dozen works to date, owing to her detailed and painstaking process that begins digitally.
Rogan Brown’s paper sculptures depict complex scientific processes and organisms. The artist, as what he calls a "non-scientist" or “outsider,” attempts to reconcile and recreate the life of bacteria, the effects of quantum physics, and other true-to-life research, through his own singular creative sensibility.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List