Shanghai Library hosts comic and illustration exhibition

The 4th Ding Cong National Comic and Illustration Exhibition is showing at the Shanghai Library East Branch through October 15.

The exhibition features almost 400 works selected from 3,000 candidates around the country. Among those, 60 percent were created by young and middle-aged artists.

Organized by the Shanghai Artists’ Association, the Shanghai Animation and Cartoon Association, and the Xin Min Evening Newspaper, the exhibition is named after Ding Cong (1916-2009), one of China’s top illustration artists.

Nearly 10 works on display at the exhibition received support from the Ding Cong Foundation.

“Today comic is no longer just a simple form of brushwork, but a way of thinking through any form of art,” said Sun Shaobo, director of the academic committee of the Shanghai Animation and Cartoon Association. “The term of ‘Big Comic,’ actually undertakes the cross-border integration and innovation of traditional comics and contemporary animation.”

One of the highlights of the show is Zuo Chen’s “Peony Pavilion.” Based on a printmaking style with the animation form, the work outlines a dream world that combines both the fantasies and realities of the characters Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei.

Another item in the spotlight is Zhu Junyue’s work titled “Crossing.” The tableau immediately catches the viewer’s eyes, as it features a pair of robotic hands flipping through the bamboo slips of the ancient book of “Dao De Jing,” or “The Classic of the Way and the Virtue” by Chinese ancient philosopher Lao Zi, on bamboo slips.

The artist apparently renders a message – If artificial intelligence is learning ancient wisdom, then what about mankind?