Che Jianquan, Water Elegies of Memory and Landscape

In a quiet suspended between water and sky, Che Jianquan’s new solo exhibition invites viewers to see time as a boundless flow. The show is a poetic journey that fuses geography and memory, transforming two distant landscapes - the mists of Ruqin Lake in Lushan and the tides of Kinmen Island - into a single, meditative visual experience. The exhibition unfolds through two video series, Pavilion and Water Scroll, where water becomes a natural archive and silent witness of history. In the pavilion veiled in Lushan’s fog, Che captures the reflections of time drifting over the submerged ruins of the Daling Temple, a site once cherished by poet Bai Juyi. His images, light as ink vapors, turn the lake into a “water elegy” where present and tradition intertwine. Across the sea, the footage of Kinmen follows tides that have carried migrants, military heroes, and, more recently, the slow fading of tensions between China and Taiwan. Each wave holds a fragment of history - migrations, wars, reconciliations. Granite cliffs and abandoned fortifications appear and vanish like memories that water both preserves and erases. Che Jianquan, who as a young man copied Ma Yuan’s Water Studies, revives the lessons of ink painting and transforms them into a digital language. Mists and currents become luminous brushstrokes, while the empty space of Chinese tradition expands across the screen like an infinite horizon. Water is not only a subject but also a tool of meditation: a moving surface reflecting the fragility of history and the timeless strength of nature.