Beyond the magnificent, boundary-breaking “Fantasy-Color Freehand” landscapes associated with his artistic name Muran Gong, LU Guanyu is steering his practice into a profound new realm. His recent series of abstract works represent not merely a stylistic shift, but a cosmological leap—a full realization of ink’s potential as a contemporary language for articulating the invisible forces of the universe.
In these new paintings, recognizable mountains and lakes dissolve into vortices of star-dust, chromatic energy fields, and phantom topographies. This is the ultimate evolution of his early “Illusory Intention Method.” LU Guanyu’s art now seeks to visualize the unseen dynamics that govern our reality. He often poses a revelatory question: “When incense smoke rises, why does it not move in a straight line? It dances because it rides currents of dark energy and swirling, colorful luminosity—forces unseen by most, but perceptible to a trained sensibility.” For him, the traditional “blank space” of ink painting is an illusion; it is, in fact, the most vibrant area, teeming with these luminous, Dunhuang-fresco-like energies. His canvas is never empty, but always full—a record of captured forces.
This departure from representation marks ink’s complete metamorphosis into a global contemporary medium. His vocabulary of whirling linear structures, colliding color fields, and deep spatial portals is rooted in the Eastern philosophy of “Qi Yun” (spirit resonance) yet speaks a universal tongue about cosmic origin, temporal flow, and elemental energy. LU Guanyu achieves a dual transcendence: formally, he transitions ink from depicting the external world to constructing internal, psychic cosmoses; conceptually, he elevates personal meditation into a metaphysical inquiry with shared human resonance.
Thus, “Muran Gong” and “LU Guanyu” embody two synergistic facets of one artistic consciousness: the former is the innovator who re-engages tradition; the latter is the visionary who channels the cosmos. In this new body of work, LU Guanyu is forging a unique artistic signature—one as potent and identifiable as the visual languages of international masters like Zao Wou-Ki or Kusama Yayoi. He is demonstrating how the deepest veins of Eastern thought, when filtered through a radically contemporary sensibility, can generate a powerful and utterly unique voice in the global art discourse of the 21st century.
