Zhou Xianglin: Fresh Breeze, Bright Moon at Tianyi Pavilion

Zhou Xianglin: Fresh Breeze, Bright Moon at Tianyi Pavilion

In November 2025 the exhibition *Fresh Breeze, Bright Moon — the Calligraphy and Painting of Zhou Xianglin* opened at Tianyi Pavilion in Ningbo, the storied library long praised as the “Book City of the South”. Hosted by Tianyi Pavilion and on view from November 4 to 18, the show drew artists, collectors and patrons to its opening gathering on November 9.

*Guests at the opening gathering, with museum director Zhu Lizhen, deputy director Zheng Weiwei and Ningbo Calligraphers Association chairman Cai Yi among them*

The Artist

Zhou Xianglin (born 1963 in Nanjing; courtesy name Ruoxi) is a calligrapher, painter, art critic and film director. Trained at Nanjing University of the Arts and the Beijing Film Academy under Shen Peng and Huang Dun, he sits on the national committee of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, serves as a council member of the Chinese Calligraphers Association, and is a researcher at the China National Academy of Painting. His publications range from poetry and prose collections to albums of painting and calligraphy.

A Title with a Story

The four characters of the exhibition’s title come from a scroll the modern master Xie Zhiliu wrote for Zhou in 1996 — a treasured token of one generation’s affection and hope for the next.

*Exhibition title: Fresh Breeze, Bright Moon*

Inside the Show

More than thirty recent works filled the pavilion’s Zhoujintang hall. Zhou’s paintings pair winding mountains and tiny literati figures with drifting clouds, small bridges and poetic inscriptions; his calligraphy moves through seal, clerical, regular, running and cursive scripts, from delicate album leaves to monumental hanging scrolls — quiet, clear and archaic in mood, with the free spirit of the Wei-Jin era shining through. At the opening, Zhou donated an eight-panel cursive rendering of the Orchid Pavilion Preface to the Tianyi Pavilion Museum.

*Zhou Xianglin (right) donates his eight-panel cursive Orchid Pavilion Preface to the Tianyi Pavilion Museum*

Selected Works

*Leisurely Roaming — ink on paper, 15 × 22 cm. The inscription praises mountain scenery “like poetry, like song, like dance.”*

*Walking Alone — ink on paper, 15 × 75 cm. The inscription recalls a hermit whose shout from a summit was heard ninety li away.*

*Moving for Love, clerical script — 32 × 89 cm*

*A Moment’s Delight in Mountains and Rivers — ink on paper, 24 × 19 cm*

*Miscellaneous Notes on Calligraphy — ink on paper, 15 × 34 cm*

*Clouds, Water, Pines and Mountains — ink on paper, 20 × 24 cm*

*Marvelous Landscape — ink on paper, 28 × 24 cm*

*Wondrous Insight — ink on paper, 15 × 22.5 cm*

*Li Bai’s “Preface to a Spring Evening Banquet in the Peach-Blossom Garden,” four hanging scrolls — 180 × 56 cm each*

*Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu — ink on paper, 19 × 24 cm. The inscription recalls a past journey to a scene on Lushan so precipitous that travelers still climbed together to gaze upon it.*

If this quiet, literati manner appeals to you, Badou Art’s specialists are happy to help you commission a work in the tradition.

Source: https://www.badouart.com/26891.html