Shanghai, China: The “Feeling the Mountains and Knowing the Waters” art project,first launched in Chengdu, follows the topography of the Yangtze River Watershed asa creative thread. With the support of Fosun Foundation, Qiu Anxiong led a team thatdeparted from Shanghai and passed through the Orchid Pavilion at Shaoxing, the RockBridge Waterfall at Mount Tiantai's Shanguoqing Temple, Mount Tianmu, MountSanqing, Mount Lu, Wuzu Temple, Chibi, Yichang, the Baidi Fortress at Fengjie, Anyue,and finally back to Chengdu. “Qiu Anxiong: A Meandering Song of Early Spring” unfoldsasaseriesof fieldresearchandmultimedia practices with shanshuipainting asmedium, with the first exhibition at Fosun Foundation Chengdu. Now, “A MeanderingSong of Early Spring” is presented once again at Fosun Foundation Shanghai, with anexhibition covering the entire third floor space, marking a shift in the project from field

observationsofmountainlandscapestotheexaminationanddialogueofthemetropolitan spectacle and context of modern life.Qiu Anxiong“A Meandering Song of Early Spring” Chengdu Exhibition View, 2025Courtesy Fosun Foundation ChengduQiu Anxiong“A Meandering Song of Early Spring” Chengdu Exhibition View, 2025Courtesy Fosun Foundation ChengduQiu Anxiong has always sought inspiration from the threads of Chinese tradition in hispractice. His landmark “New Classic of Mountains and Seas” series sets out from theperspective of theClassic of Mountains and Seasto depict the civilizational clashesand challenges facing humanity in the modern world. In this exhibition, Qiu Anxiongsets his sights on the broader shanshui landscape painting tradition, seeking to explorea new artistic language through a clash between modern technology and traditionalspirit. In this exhibition, Qiu Anxiong has combined multiple mediums, including inkpainting, video, sound, and installation to create a multisensory immersive experiencethat echoes the literati artistic traditions fusing poetry, calligraphy, painting and sealinscriptions while embodying the openness and tolerance of contemporary art.As Zong Bing wrote in the ancient painting treatisePreface on Shanshui,“Sagesencompass the Dao to respond to nature, while the virtuous purify their minds in

savoring images.” Shanshui painting is a very unique and important field in Chineseart history. Shanshui painting evolved over more than a thousand years from the Weiand Jin period through the Qing dynasty. For the Shanghai installment of the exhibition,Fosun Foundation has provided the entire third floor exhibition space, employing bothan open, continuous thread and sequential presentation method so that visitors canexperience the path “from the mountains to the city.” This pathway reveals the corecontent of“Feeling theMountains andKnowing the Waters,” including detailedtextual descriptions and Qiu Anxiong’s manuscripts and writings for the project.Zhang JinghuaFeeling the Mountains and Knowing the Waters, 1’12”, video, 2025Courtesy the ArtistQiu AnxiongSpring-Chill Stepping Song, 1’47”, video, 2025Courtesy the Artist

Qiu AnxiongNew Peach BlossomWonderland II, 600cm x 220 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2024Courtesy the ArtistCompared to the Chengdu exhibition, the Shanghai installment has expanded its formand content in a targeted manner, adding numerous paintings and two long ink scrollsas well as a new video work. The new paintings and ink scrolls take the sights andperceptions along the journey of “Feeling the Mountains and Knowing the Waters” astheir creative material, forming an intertextual relationship with the video artworksthat bring us from real journeys through the landscape to onsite creations in thelandscape, and on to memory-based painting practices, to present a multidimensionalexpression of the landscape through painting, video, music, and poetry. The new videowork The Temple Afar was filmed at Mount Emei in Sichuan Province.Drawinginspiration from the Zen-like poetry of Persian poet Rumi, it develops a metaphor forcosmic nature through music and dance in the landscape and in modern architecturalspace. This exhibition would like to thank The Chuan, hailed as “China’s most beautifuldistillery,”located at the foot of Mount Emei. We join in presenting the spirit ofshanshui painting.Qiu AnxiongThe Temple Afar，21’51”, video, 2025Courtesy the Artist

Qiu AnxiongSpring Water Dancing in the Breeze,300cm x 150cm, acrylic on canvas, 2025Courtesy the ArtistAside from the works in the exhibition space, the artist also created a public sculptureonthefourth-floorrooftopterraceonthethemeof“UrbanShanshui,”usingtransparent screens to intervene in the urban public space with natural spaces suchas forests, trees, and seas of clouds, fusing them with the urban textures along theHuangpu River to create a new visual vocabulary. The video work juxtaposes footagefrom the wilderness with the urban skyline to form visual tension and overlappinglayers of natural history. The long ink scrolls reconstruct a visual journey among themountainsandriversalongatemporalthread,transportingviewersintothetransformation and sublimation of the natural environment and memory through inkas their gaze shifts across the scroll.Duringtheexhibition,FosunFoundation willholdaseriesofrelatedeventsinShanghai,includingartistandcuratordiscussions,academiclectures,creativeworkshops, film screenings, and public exhibition tours, inviting participating artists,cross-media collaborators, scholars, and urban researchers to join in exploring the“Reconstruction of Shanshui Traditions in the Context of Urbanization,” and the roleof contemporary art in urban public issues.The exhibition also invited numerous artists to perform at the opening ceremony,includingcomposerJinWang,musiciansZhangWenliangandDuanZhiyu,choreographer Yu Erge, and dancers Mu Changchun and Wang Shaojun. Their livemusic and dance performances enriched the opening ceremony, adding dimensionsto the interpretation of the exhibition and joining to create a multimedia artistic space.The exhibition follows a core thread of “from the mountains to the city” to presentthe practices of artists in adjusting their visual language and narrative strategies inresponse to different geographic and cultural contexts. Worth noting is that this 3,000kilometerartisticjourneyenjoyedstrongsupportfromLSHAuto.UpholdingMercedes-Benz’s spirit of“The Best or Nothing,”LSH Auto provided the artistic teamwith a reliable, enjoyable travel experience, allowing for unhindered exploration ofcreativity and the shanshui spirit. Qiu Anxiong’s early plein air field studies and dronevideos focused on capturingnaturaltopography, traces ofhistory,andregionalmemories. As the narrative enters the urban context, the artist's perspective is shifting

to modern architecture, public space, vestiges of industry, and urban ecologies, usingthe artistic methods of reshaping, reconstruction, and deconstruction to reveal thepersistent tensions between natural and artificial, historical and contemporary. Thisturn is not just a shift in the regional field but a turn towards praxis-oriented thinkingonhowcontemporaryartcaninterveneinpublicissuesandrespondtotherelationshipsbetweennatureandcultureinthemarchofurbanization.FosunFoundation hopes this will inspire the public to reconsider the complex relationshipsbetween nature, history, and urban life, and provide greater potential for the practiceof contemporary art in the urban cultural field.As curator Zhu Zhu says, “Shanghai was the starting point for this mobile project. Thisreturn to the origin point to present this project in the form an exhibition has a specialcommemorative significance.China'svastnaturallandscape anddeeplayersofcultural accumulation beckon the next team of wanderers who may co