Cooking Smoke Curl Up in the Air, 2023

Lexi Caiqin  

Lexi Caiqin or Ding Caiqin is a Chinese artist born in 1987 who lives and works in Nantong. Jiangsu in China. He was born in Daoxiang Village is a village built around the 1958 Daoxiang State Owned Tea Factory. 

Daoxiang Village is surrounded by hills on all sides and located in a valley with a stream running through it. The hills on all sides are planted with tea trees and other economic crops such as bamboo forests. Lexi Caiqin believes that in the context of the development of social productivity to the point where there is no longer a need to rely on painting to record reality, the only way out for painting art is for artists to become one of the thinkers, and their works should become a medium for artists to convey their valuable thoughts. 

As Sandra Jackson Dumont, the director of the Metropolitan Department of Education, has said, the true power of art lies not in aesthetics, but in inspiring people to think about the world in different ways with an opening dialogue between different times, spaces, and civilizations. His current artistic creations can be divided into two directions. One is about memories of his hometown and childhood life, with a focus on expressing emotions; The other is a subjective view about objective laws, mainly expressed rationally. This is also the main direction of his future creations. In the future, Lexi may try to use other media besides oil painting for the artistic expression of subjective views on objective laws, as he believes this may have more expressive advantages. 

His current work adopts the form of painting combined with writing. This is a model borrowed from traditional Chinese literati painting. Traditional literati painting began around Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty, where poetry was inscribed on the painting, and the painting itself corresponded to the poetry. His paintings and writing are also like this, the artist wants to convey better the emotions and thoughts he wants to express. Some people may think that good painting does not require the assistance of writing, and he disagrees with this. Lexi believes that the combination of good painting and good writing can better convey the thoughts and ideas of the creator.