劉丹, b.1953

Collection of Michael Dunn; acquired directly from the artist in the early 1990s

Collection of Dr. Patrick Rosenkjar, Tokyo

Liu’s treatment of the subject is elegant, spiritual and constructive, capturing the minutest details of its surface, to the point that the stone itself almost seems like a landscape. He describes rocks as the ‘stem cells’ of landscape, a starting place with infinite possibilities for development, as well as the basis for Chinese people's understanding of space and time. When he portrays particular rocks he adheres to the form before him. By contrast, his landscape paintings seem to unfold organically in an almost inevitable progression that resonates with the artist's ‘stem cell’ concept. This very fine drawing of the rock, from 1992, was the maquette for the large 1993 rock commissioned by Michael Dunn and later sold to the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University.