The works retain the qualities of prints, while expanding and extending into drawing and painting. In 2010, I went to Jiajiang, Sichuan, and combined the folk crafts of silk cultivation and papermaking to form a new, hybrid material to work with. Spiritually I sought the cultural element of indigenous, native traditions, experiencing and interacting with the materials. By directly participating in local silk and paper production, I learned to combine them to create Tang Silk: mulberry paper made with a large percentage of silk fiber. This material was challenging to make prints with, as the paper's absorption and its response to ink affected the quality of the engraved image. To make these works, I print on the silk paper to define the space, then draw, paint, and scrape it with a wire brush. This process and my aesthetic and emotional understanding of basic papermaking provide a cultural signature and an effective definition of historical space and time through visual language. I work the silk mulberry paper in a number of ways: I layer it; cut into it; print, draw, paint on it; rub it; and subject it to other techniques. This demonstrates how the paper performs under different trying circumstances. I inquire of paper itself about its various possible forms of expression. tang chenghua 唐承华 was born in 1964 in Fujian Province and has degrees from Fujian Normal University, Nagoya University of Arts, and Aichi Prefecture University of Fine Arts. He has worked at the Japan NHK Cultural Center and Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, and is now an associate professor at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. His solo exhibitions include the National Art Museum of China (2012) and Today Gallery (2014), both in Beijing. He works in many media, including printing, painting, drawing, ceramics, and papermaking Fu Xiaotong: needle, hole, light To make a hole in paper with a needle is a destructive act. The material disappears and is destroyed but, with the intervention of light, the substance of life is awakened. My series of handmade paper works is created by pricking with needles. Needles are the traditional tools for embroidery. I ignore the fact that Xuan 宣 paper is the material for traditional Chinese painting and reconsider the possibilities of the material itself. Traditional Chinese paper is made from bamboo, grass, bark, and other natural materials. The thick handmade bamboo paper I use is fine and flexible, and I can feel the presence of plant life. A needle prick results in light. The material receives a transparent hole; the light depends on the shape, nothingness, and infinite source. In the tens of thousands of times the needle pierces the paper, the paper undergoes both destruction and creation. The material directly recovers in mental consciousness, creating an opening with each piercing. I began making this body of work on Xuan paper in 2010. In the course of studying the material of language, I learned to focus on performance and the significance of the material itself. Usually ink is applied to paper to make art. In my work, the material itself moves; the paper itself is alive, showing its existence. I don't draw or write. Instead I make holes with a needle. This approach allows me to explore a new material language. Visually, this art is a kind of purification and a filtering of sensory experience. I try to take away personal consciousness, awareness of my instincts about the substance. The emotion is simplified to focus attention on the material. The chaotic forces of my consciousness yield to the infinite depth of life after the end of individual need. Paper, how fragile and weak. But through many needle pricks, light is produced. These pores make everything transparent. Paper is moved by the tip of the needle each time it pierces through, and this begins the breath of life. fu xiaotong 付小桐 (b. 1976, Shanxi province, China) lives and works in Beijing. She was graduated in 2000 from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in oil painting. Starting in 2001, she worked at the Institute of the Arts of Hebei United University. She received a graduate degree in 2013 from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing) in experimental art. Hu Rong: Fragments of Memories—The Manufacture of Paper Fun Sometimes in my mind, memories of the past will arise; I often get such joy from this. Handmade paper? I have been passively doing this for a long time, after reading about it in 1981. Chinese customs can have mysterious associations. Humans have so many hopes, but hopes to become what? I started reading then, a long slow journey into China's traditional culture, cosmology, and related fields, which gave me more access to relevant knowledge about ancient science and technology. I did fieldwork in civic arts for nearly twenty years. I also read Confucius, Chuang Tzu's Art of War, and about the Buddhist sutras and Zen experience. I wrote and published three volumes about Northeastern Chinese folk art. I also studied witchcraft, anthropology, and the science of Feng Shui; semiotics and abstract thinking; original thoughts about artistic life; Adler on phenomenological psychology, modern schools of psychology, and other related books. My reading habits are a painting of my inner world. With nearly thirty years of studying, painting has become my life state. I draw on my own soul in the process of my dialogue with ancient papermaking. I simply want to guess: this piece of paper now takes my life. My soul is in the process of obtaining simplicity, and the process is now a complete way of art. What will drive me now? My life is now passive. When a thought comes out, how good is my memory? See the flowers and trees! Nature calls! But this is a summoned illusion. This call happens at some point over the life of intimate interaction, so I am very excited. But when confronted by the eyes, what is summoned will disappear. The work will be in the eyes of the beholder. The wise see wisdom, which is the reason I do not like writing about my art. I enjoy solitude. Because freedom is willful, more and more distant memories collide in a single moment and I find that all my education and conscious thought is not the same as my visual representation. I seem to have been in my own world, as though depicting a dedication ceremony, conveying a trancelike meditation. The artistic expression of an object must appear against a cosmic background. Wither the soul? Life? hu rong 胡戎 (b. 1956) is a professor of folk art at the China Folk Paper Research Association, Institute of Liaoning Province. She has written extensively about art, especially Chinese folk art. She has won numerous awards for her work as a writer, an artist in many media, and a book designer. Peng Yong My inspiration comes from the metropolis where I live, which connects with me in many ways. The numerous high-rises and crowds of people ironically make a person feel more isolated. The densely populated residential area and the fast-paced tempo of living upset me very much. I etch copper or zinc plates until they are riddled with holes and wounds. I ink them and run them through an etching press. I use thick, recycled handmade Chinese paper to produce a strong relief texture. The multiplicity in my prints signifies modern buildings. Without traces of human habitat, those buildings stand alone as if the debris of the universe. The long and faceless façades appear to have a unique beauty of order, robustly mediating between reality and imagination. Among other works, Deserted Capital—A Beautiful Dream Dissolved was made by repeating impressions from 50 x 50-centimeter plates. The work can be rendered differently according to different spatial arrangements. peng yong 彭勇 was born in 1984 in Hunan province. In 2014 he graduated with a master's degree from the paintings and engraving department of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has won awards for his artwork in Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul, including the Yishu 8 China Prize, sponsored by the Hermes Foundation. In 2014, he began teaching at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.

‍