Woodblock printing breaks traditional boundaries

At the Asia Art Center in Beijing, the works on display carry the warmth of the hand and the soft gentleness of water. Cassette tapes, Walkmans, and old CD players are captured with delicate precision on rice paper. The classical imagery of traditional Chinese ink painting is deconstructed, reassembled, and reborn through carving and printing. Old static prints no longer stay on paper but merge with animation and video.

The exhibition The Unspoken opened in September and features more than 100 works that integrate elements of water-based woodblock printing by young artists.

It makes one change clear: water-based woodblock printing born in China and shaped into a uniquely Eastern system has moved far beyond the old label of "reproducing ancient paintings". In the hands of young artists, it is updating its language and expanding its media.

Unlike copperplate, lithography and oil-based woodcuts, which dominate Western printmaking, water-based woodblock printing grew from Chinese craftsmanship and aesthetics. Its handmade logic — using water and blocks and printed layer by layer — produces transparent washes and natural wood grain.

Curator Zhu Li says that people knew the technique for years mainly through reproductions of traditional ink paintings. Conservative methods and outdated expressions left this unique craft without a strong contemporary outlet. The Unspoken uses specific works to break apart that fixed image, explains Zhu.

Behind this wave of young creators is Chen Qi, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2019, Chen co-founded a decade-long public project, the Chinese Water-based Woodblock Youth Program. For six years, Chen has made a woodblock printing piece each year-end for a charity sale. All proceeds support exhibitions, academic publishing, and young artists.

Chen says the value of water-based woodblock printing is not abstract. It lies in its one-of-a-kind handmade medium.

"To some extent, water-based woodblock printmaking is not merely a technical genre but a profound expression of the Chinese artistic spirit. This technique has played a pivotal role in showing China's printmaking artistry and in communicating Chinese cultural values," he says.

Since 2021, the youth program Chen champions has held an annual exhibition. To date, the Chinese Water-based Woodblock Youth Program has brought together 60 artists and shown more than 480 works, with several touring exhibitions.

This year's exhibition focuses on how water-based woodblock printing is breaking its medium boundaries. Four progressive sections — ban (block), yin (print), jie (boundary), and chang (field) — trace an old technique as it changes.

The first section, Block, returns to the most basic handmade feel of water-based woodblock. Fang Fan's Melody Hues series stands out. He chose water-based woodblock printing as a "slow" medium to counter the fast-paced era.

Instead of the rough retro look common in nostalgic work, Fang makes Walkmans, cassettes, headphones, and CD players the main subjects. Through extremely fine multi-block overprinting, he restores the smooth, hard surface of industrial objects while keeping the fine wood grain, watercolor bleeding and hand-carved knife marks unique to the medium.

"Digital production pursues a seamless uniformity. The charm of water-based woodblock printing is that it has the traces, differences and marks of time," says the 44-year-old.

He deliberately uses this "slow handwork" against today's fast-swiping, instant-refresh image consumption. Dozens of layered printings preserve the special memory of everyday objects that are fading with time.

Artist Li Yang also stays close to the medium's own language. He turns difficult emotions and human states into printed textures. While carving and printing, he adjusts the watercolors' flow, letting a planned composition merge with accidental bleeding. The result is a beautiful process unique to water-based woodblock printing.

Beyond solid technical work, the other three sections show how young creators are pushing the art form wider. Print focuses on contemporary image translation. Young artists move away from traditional sketching and use watermark techniques to reconstruct historical sites, classical landscapes and other traditional images.

Boundary focuses on cross-media innovation, completely pushing the traditional limits of water-based woodblock printing as a paper-based art form. Artists combine printmaking with animation, video and installation art.

In Field, artists bring the art form to public and cultural life. They mix printmaking languages from different countries with mixed materials, making water-based woodcutting fit global contemporary settings close to everyday life.

Curator Zhu points out that the inheritance of Chinese water-based woodblock printing is no longer just a continuation of old techniques. With the energy of young artists, it is developing a new language, new forms and new values in a uniquely Eastern medium.