The exhibition shows the beauty of reading through various paintings and calligraphies. Photo: Courtesy of Shu Yong Museum of Modern Art

A new exhibition at Shu Yong Museum of Modern Art in Beijing aims to show the beauty of reading through various paintings and calligraphies from different Chinese artists. 

Inspired by a book Beauty of Reading by artist Wang Shaochang, the exhibition provides a new way to read and a new experience of beauty.

Artist Shu Yong decided to use these 100 ink paintings by Wang and 100 passages of text from the book as the basis for the exhibition. He invited more than a dozen of calligraphers to collaborate. They transformed the text from the book and wrote directly on the exhibition wall. Together with a hundred paintings, it forms an immersive exhibition of calligraphy and painting with humanistic concepts. Curator Shu Yong said, "This is a new method of concentrated expression of concepts, a concrete practice based on traditional culture that attempts to achieve creative transformation and innovative development."

The exhibition invited more than a dozen calligraphers such as Yuan Yaping, Zhang Ji, Lin Yang, Li Xuewei, Wang Zhen, Shu Jie, Long You, and Feng Junhu. They said that this was their first time writing on a wall, not only a challenge, but also a special writing experience. The cultural tradition of writing on walls has actually been an important part of traditional Chinese culture.

In Shu's eyes, hosting such an exhibition is to raise people's interest in reading. 

The exhibition is set to run until November.