Overview
He Art Museum is pleased to present “In the Wake of Blossoms,” the first solo exhibition of Sichuan-based Chinese Artist Qi Lan in the Lingnan region, on view from 6 July to 11 October 2026. Across multiple series of works, the exhibition marks the artist’s most recent explorations and experiments in color, form, and a liminal space between Western post-romantic traditions, Chinese Literati formation, and as the artist puts it, a “self-disciplined and consistent abstraction.”
Trained formally in Chinese painting and grounded in profound art-historical scholarship, Qi Lan has mastered the systematic lexicon of literati painting from an early age and devoted eighteen years to editorial work. After 2004, he largely ceased his practice in Chinese painting and began to seek a more direct form of expression, using rough, aggressive elements to dismantle the refined rhetoric of literati sensibility. Around 2010, he began disassembling and reconfiguring objects, generating new visual tension through dense, intertwined brushstrokes. Despite his rebellious stance toward received knowledge—and his near abandonment of writing after leaving his editorial position in 2018—Qi Lan has never relinquished the habit of reading. His subjects remain steeped in poetic associations, with image and text drifting in and out of alignment to form visual metaphors that evoke subtle insights.
Instinctively, Qi Lan rejects sweet, luminous idioms; his practice is marked by a pronounced anti-aesthetic tendency. For him, ugliness is the culmination and end of aesthetics—only by immersing oneself in experience and expression of ugliness can one grasp the full meaning of beauty. He deploys intense brushwork and chromatic shifts to enact this ugliness; his studio floor is littered with experimental sketches, each yearning for beauty within the ugly, just as one imagines light in the darkness. He has no taste for sleek, fluent patterns, and refuses technical expediency. Within his treatment of image, gesture, and surface, he conceals rebellion that allows intricate abundance to achieve a dynamic balance amid conflicts.
Despite his untamed defiance, Qi Lan is still striving to conceive a sense of self-disciplined and consistent abstraction. From the interplay of sketched scenes and wild brushstrokes in the To Paris series, to the further visual experiments in the dozens of bound album manuscripts on view, the gentle and the fierce within his painting have yet to reach a reconciliation. He has discarded the treasures of literati tradition, resisted formalized languages, and broken free from the constraints of material and method—yet he continues to seek even greater resolve. The stylistic characters of these works may well signal the direction of his future practice.
Qi Lan is a devoted reader of Du Fu’s poetry. His work The City in Deep Spring appears to depict flowers awaiting rain and clouds adrift—yet what it truly registers is the mud, weeds, and moss beneath the artist’s feet as he traced the path of Du Fu’s exile along the Qujiang River. To Du Fu—A Letter to the Thatched Cottage on Renri takes its title from Gao Shi’s heartfelt greeting to his exiled friend, yet by the time Du Fu made his way back home, Gao Shi was already gone— “Spring radiance idles away in vain.” A homecoming deferred; a message never delivered. Beneath the splendor of blossoms lies a desolation of words that can never find their addressee. Beneath the splendor of flowers lies a sense of desolation, a message that will never be delivered to someone who’s left. The title of this exhibition is likewise drawn from Du Fu, and echoes the five works on display from the Walking Alone Among Flowers by the Riverside series: dazzling at first glance, yet melancholy upon closer look. For Qi Lan, that poem represents both a tender dream about homeland and the conviction to carry on alone.
Exhibition Information
Title：Qi Lan: In the Wake of Blossoms
Dates: July 6 – October 11, 2026
Venue: He Art Museum
Opening Hours: Monday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00 Last admission at 17:30.
About HEM
Located in Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong, He Art Museum (HEM) is a non-profit private art museum designed by Tadao Ando. HEM focuses on modern and contemporary culture and art with an international scope. As one of the first pet-friendly museums in China, HEM is dedicated to integrating art into the daily lives of community members, aiming to create an open and inclusive community art museum.
Follow He Art Museum
WeChat: 和美术馆 HEM Weibo: 和美术馆 HEM
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Website: http://hem.org/ Press Inquiries: press@hem.org
Trained formally in Chinese painting and grounded in profound art-historical scholarship, Qi Lan has mastered the systematic lexicon of literati painting from an early age and devoted eighteen years to editorial work. After 2004, he largely ceased his practice in Chinese painting and began to seek a more direct form of expression, using rough, aggressive elements to dismantle the refined rhetoric of literati sensibility. Around 2010, he began disassembling and reconfiguring objects, generating new visual tension through dense, intertwined brushstrokes. Despite his rebellious stance toward received knowledge—and his near abandonment of writing after leaving his editorial position in 2018—Qi Lan has never relinquished the habit of reading. His subjects remain steeped in poetic associations, with image and text drifting in and out of alignment to form visual metaphors that evoke subtle insights.
Instinctively, Qi Lan rejects sweet, luminous idioms; his practice is marked by a pronounced anti-aesthetic tendency. For him, ugliness is the culmination and end of aesthetics—only by immersing oneself in experience and expression of ugliness can one grasp the full meaning of beauty. He deploys intense brushwork and chromatic shifts to enact this ugliness; his studio floor is littered with experimental sketches, each yearning for beauty within the ugly, just as one imagines light in the darkness. He has no taste for sleek, fluent patterns, and refuses technical expediency. Within his treatment of image, gesture, and surface, he conceals rebellion that allows intricate abundance to achieve a dynamic balance amid conflicts.
Despite his untamed defiance, Qi Lan is still striving to conceive a sense of self-disciplined and consistent abstraction. From the interplay of sketched scenes and wild brushstrokes in the To Paris series, to the further visual experiments in the dozens of bound album manuscripts on view, the gentle and the fierce within his painting have yet to reach a reconciliation. He has discarded the treasures of literati tradition, resisted formalized languages, and broken free from the constraints of material and method—yet he continues to seek even greater resolve. The stylistic characters of these works may well signal the direction of his future practice.
Qi Lan is a devoted reader of Du Fu’s poetry. His work The City in Deep Spring appears to depict flowers awaiting rain and clouds adrift—yet what it truly registers is the mud, weeds, and moss beneath the artist’s feet as he traced the path of Du Fu’s exile along the Qujiang River. To Du Fu—A Letter to the Thatched Cottage on Renri takes its title from Gao Shi’s heartfelt greeting to his exiled friend, yet by the time Du Fu made his way back home, Gao Shi was already gone— “Spring radiance idles away in vain.” A homecoming deferred; a message never delivered. Beneath the splendor of blossoms lies a desolation of words that can never find their addressee. Beneath the splendor of flowers lies a sense of desolation, a message that will never be delivered to someone who’s left. The title of this exhibition is likewise drawn from Du Fu, and echoes the five works on display from the Walking Alone Among Flowers by the Riverside series: dazzling at first glance, yet melancholy upon closer look. For Qi Lan, that poem represents both a tender dream about homeland and the conviction to carry on alone.
Exhibition Information
Title：Qi Lan: In the Wake of Blossoms
Dates: July 6 – October 11, 2026
Venue: He Art Museum
Opening Hours: Monday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00 Last admission at 17:30.
About HEM
Located in Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong, He Art Museum (HEM) is a non-profit private art museum designed by Tadao Ando. HEM focuses on modern and contemporary culture and art with an international scope. As one of the first pet-friendly museums in China, HEM is dedicated to integrating art into the daily lives of community members, aiming to create an open and inclusive community art museum.
Follow He Art Museum
WeChat: 和美术馆 HEM Weibo: 和美术馆 HEM
rednote：HEM 和美术馆 Instagram：@hemartmuseum
Website: http://hem.org/ Press Inquiries: press@hem.org