Buddhist Artist Hu Junjun opens up about art and the ego

ARTNET NEWS
By Sam Gaskin
Hu Junjun, Eastern Jin Dynasty (2014). Courtesy Junjun Hu Studio.
The word for "contradiction" in Chinese literally translates as "spear shield," and derives from the story of a village weapon smith caught bragging both that his spears can pierce anything and that his shields are impenetrable. Contemporary artist Hu Junjun finds herself in a position almost as fraught: that of a Buddhist contemporary artist, someone devoted to both self expression and the negation of the self. Hu paints in oil, using a grid to map images on linen. In her series “Beyond the Mountain" (2012–13), she took sections from ancient shanshui, or landscape paintings, and painstakingly recreated them, box by box, in pale grays and browns, leaving the white grids visible–like grout between tiles —in her finished works. [link]