Contemporary ink painter Li Jin uses a subversive form of traditional Chinese literati painting to tackle the banality and mediocrity in modernized China. Nudes, food, animals and humorous, floating text are common repertoire in his work. Merging vulgarity with beauty, his work interrogates the definition of tradition, desire and banality in modernized China. Through the repeated portrayal of often bluntly sensual if not gluttonous figures conducting their daily routines, the artist delivers a deliberately obscure message, offering a humane but gently mocking view of contemporary life.

In Time Passing Swiftly Like Flowing Water (Lot 149), an adolescent girl with her hair pulled taut is shown casually slouching on a couch in a confined space, filled claustrophobically with Chinese inscriptions. The inscriptions are poetically and elegantly written in classical literary format to describe the girl’s lovesick state of mind. The coarse calligraphic brushwork contrasts the delicately written text, whereas her expressionless face is detached from the florid emotions in the text. Here, a multitude of disassociations across semiotics, the subject and the form immediately deliver a sense of dislocation and disconnection. Through those clues, Li Jin challenges the moral and aesthetic aspects in traditional Chinese literati painting and opens a new dimension to bridge a dialogue between this long-lost art form and the contemporary audiences.