LI GANG | STAMP: Project room

Rolando Anselmi is pleased to present Stamp, a new art project by contemporary chinese artist Li Gang. This exhibition serves not only as a discourse on native soil, identity, and the ontology of art but also as a profound exploration of painting itself. By reconstructing materiality, the project aims to re examine the contemporary significance of the “essential connection” between the painter and their pigments. The core theme of the exhibition addresses the crisis of “pigment legitimacy” within the modern painting system. Since the 17th century, and accelerated by the advent of tube paints in the 19th century, the standardized industrial production of pigments has greatly facilitated artistic creation paving the way for Impressionist en plein air painting. However, it has simultaneously caused a “rupture in materiality.” Mass-produced pigments have gradually become mere “substitutes” and “imitators” of color. This industrial convenience has imperceptibly diluted the purity of the artist's emotional transmission, severing the intrinsic logical link between the pigment and the subject depicted, and stripping the painter of their primal command over the material. Confronting this contemporary predicament, Li Gang attempts to heal this rupture in Stamp. He posits that prior to the 17th century, painters were akin to “hunters.” They had to personally seek out, grind, and process substances that resonated with their subjects to create pigments-much like primitive hunters mixing the blood of their prey with earth to create imagery on cave walls. This state, where “the substance is the pigment, and the pigment is the image,” represents the most legitimate path for emotional expression in painting. To this end, Li Gang abandons the direct appropriation of industrial paints in this exhibition, turning instead to soil from his hometown as his core medium. He grinds and mixes this native earth by hand to fabricate his own pigments. This act serves as a solemn ritual, through which the artist re-establishes the “essential connection” between the painter and the pigment. The title “Stamp” carries a dual metaphor: on one hand, just as a postage stamp is the essential voucher for the delivery of mail, the soil of one's hometown is the sole legitimate medium bearing the artist's primordial emotions. On the other hand, while small in size, a stamp carries immense information and energy. Li Gang compresses this raw energy from the land into every brushstroke on the canvas through his hand-ground pigments. Through this ultimate pursuit of materiality, Li Gang attempts to recreate the solemnity of primitive painting on the canvas. He suggests that only when pigments are liberated from industrial standardization can the relationship between the painter, the pigment, and emotion be re-valued, allowing color to reclaim its lost “legitimacy.”