First Encounter: November 11, 2000-January 12,2001 - Tapa blanda

In the 1980s, a number of Chinese artists came into their own, freed from the Cultural Revolution strictures that strictly dictated what was and was not acceptable art. In their search to get beyond classical styles and Socialist Realism, they alternately took their cues from Western Pop or from Chinese vernacular styles. Lu Sheng Zhong went the latter route, and his immersion in the native folk tradition of paper cutting has produced striking formal expressions of ideas both philosophical and religious in nature. First Encounter includes Sheng Zhong's Great Peace and Tranquility and Poetry of Harmony, two floor-to-ceiling scrolls made of lacy, intricate red cutout forms pasted on a black ground. Handsomely stitched together in a traditional Chinese book-binding technique, this book reproduces both planning sketches and the finished work.