A piece of artist Qiu Deshu’s Fissuring series is on show at the Today Art Museum in Beijing on July 25, 2020. Instead of painting on paper, the artist pasted fragments of white paper onto the surface of colored canvas or paper, thus creating fissures that resemble lightning piercing the dark sky. [Photo by Yang Xiaoyu/chinadaily.com.cn]

Li said the exhibition examines how Chinese contemporary artists, steeped in the profound Chinese cultural traditions, have blazed trails in artistic expression by capitalizing on paper's manifold properties.

For example, instead of painting on paper, artist Qiu Deshu pasted fragments of white paper onto the surface of colored canvas or paper, thus creating fissures that resemble lightning piercing the dark sky. Ink artist Wang Tiande used incense sticks to create burn marks on Xuan paper which, when viewed from afar, look no different than ink paintings. Artist Fu Xiaotong pierced nearly half a million holes in a piece of handmade Xuan paper, evoking an imposing mountain image of the Chinese ink landscape.