Under the title The Cross Style, the Long Museum of Chongqing, China presents an exhibition that explores Ding Yi’s artistic career in a panoramic manner, from its beginnings in the 1980s till today. The title refers to a potential conceptualization of Yi’s practice as the “style of the cross”, as a system of creation that takes this formal element as its basic unit. It proposes to see the evolution of the style as the evolution of a language, in which the cross transitions between symbolisms, characters, or typographies, making it possible to see such a system as one of writing.
The exhibition was cured by art historian Lu Yinghua, who noted: “Through Ding Yi, we can see many important nodes in the history of contemporary Chinese art […]. [It] can be seen as a personal review of Ding Yi. [But it] can also be a classic case of looking back at the history of current Chinese art.” In this sense, the show contextualizes Yi’s work as part of a wider movement that has reevaluated numerous artistic relationships, from the East/West paradigm to that of realism/abstraction.
The exhibition will be open to the public till December 20, 2020.