single-exhibition.php

Exhibition

  • Off-site: Galleria at Richmond City Hall Past Exhibition
  • Jiangang Su

    Birds and Rocks in Cloud City

    March 26 - June 10, 2024

    Above: Jiangang Su, Magnolia Explores Spring, 2022, ink and mineral colour on rice paper, 16” x 30”, courtesy of the artist

    Birds and Rocks in Cloud City presents a lively natural world integrating the two cultures dear to the Chinese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Jiangang Su. Enchanted by BC’s natural environment, Su skillfully situates birds native to Canada in the poetic settings typical to traditional Chinese ink and brush paintings. Equally meticulously depicted are the amorphous and porous Taihu (Lake Tai) rocks that are native to Su’s home region Suzhou, which have been appreciated by Chinese literati throughout the millennia.

    A magnolia warbler shares a flowering pear tree with buzzing bees, a dark-eyed junco rests on a sycamore maple branch whose leaves have just started to wilt. Although these scenes are partly constructed through Su’s imagination, they are also the results of hundreds of sketches made by the artist while bird watching in the Greater Vancouver area. Embellishing these scenes with inscriptions of passages of ancient literature or lines of poetry, and impressions of leisure seals engraved with brief mottos, Su combines three of his most practiced disciplinescalligraphy, painting, and Chinese seal carvingon one pictorial plane. 

    Within Chinese philosophical and spiritual traditions of stone appreciation, rocks are often associated with clouds. Certain scholars’ rocks or false mountain rocketries are referred to as the roots of clouds. When Su first arrived in Vancouver, he was immediately drawn to the term “cloud city”the nickname given to the city by early Cantonese immigrants. During his residency at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in 2022, he created a series of paintings depicting different forms of Taihu rocks, inspired by the miniature mountains constructed by artisans from Suzhou in the garden. The ever morphing rocks in misty landscapes, in tandem with the harmonious relationship between the local birds and their settings have become Su’s visual language for evoking his immigrant story and personal philosophy.

    Biography

    Born in 1974 in Suzhou, China, Jiangang Su is a calligrapher, painter, seal carver, Kintsugi artist, and educator. He studied under the renowned calligrapher and seal carver Gongda Yan in the 1980s, and graduated from the Changshu Institute of Technology. After immigrating to Canada in 2016 and setting up his studio in Richmond, Su has had exhibitions at Lipont Gallery, Sunzen Gallery, and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and co-organized the Vancouver International Chinese Calligraphy Contest in 2022. Su’s work is held in the collections of multiple institutions in both China and Canada.

     


    City Hall Galleria is located on the ground floor of Richmond City Hall, 6911, No.3 Road, Richmond, V6Y 2C1

    Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:15 am to 5 pm, except on public holidays

    Above: Jiangang Su, Magnolia Explores Spring, 2022, ink and mineral colour on rice paper, 16” x 30”, courtesy of the artist

    Hours

    Sunday 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
    Monday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Tuesday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Wednesday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Thursday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Friday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Saturday 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    Closed on statutory holidays.

    Current Exhibitions

    Admission

    By donation

    Location

    Richmond Cultural Centre
    7700 Minoru Gate
    Richmond, BC  V6Y 1R8
    Canada Line Station: Richmond-Brighouse

    604-247-8363
    gallery@richmond.ca

    Google Map

    Sign Up for Our Newsletter

    Find us on Social Media

    Richmond Art Gallery on Facebook Richmond Art Gallery on Twitter Richmond Art Gallery on YouTube Richmond Art Gallery on Instagram