Lo Ch'ing (羅青, also: Luo Qing) is one of Taiwan's most important contemporary poet-painters. His poetry is exemplary of the shift towards newer, postmodern conceptions of language in Chinese literature, and his painting practice deftly synthesizes a vast and complex swath of Chinese literati painting under the aegis of contemporary concerns with nature, society, and the effects of modernity. In both style and content, Lo Ch'ing's art constantly works at the edges of established traditions, constructing an innovative and erudite bridge between European postmodern theory and the history of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice.

Lo Ch'ing: The Poetry of Postmodern Landscape showcases the multifaceted character of the artist's engagement with the tradition of Chinese landscape painting. The theme of travel, the cyclical changes of the seasons, the intimate relationship of humanity and nonhuman nature: these are all subjects that are both deeply rooted in the traditions of Chinese landscape. But they are also timely in an era when global advances in technology create new dynamics of time, movement, and identity between people and their environment. Different virtual exhibits—accessible from the menu at left—offer viewers the opportunity to consider how notions of travel, the seasons, and the nonhuman are articulated in Lo Ch'ing's work. Collectively, these exhibits reveal how the artist takes up tradition and transforms it to illuminate the changes occurring in the natural and artificial worlds around us. The works in Lo Ch'ing: The Poetry of Postmodern Landscape ultimately serve as a catalyst for a new tradition of thought: an eclectic and adventurous thought that takes up the things surrounding us—the leaf changing color in the fall, the road winding through the woods, the ripening persimmon—and invites us to become one with them.

This online exhibition is curated by Suzie Kim, Lindsay DuPertuis, and Raino Isto in association with the Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland, College Park, and the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture.