Installation view of Mountain Jade and Mountains de-bonding at the Crow Museum of Asian Art at The University of Texas at Dallas, 2024. Photo: © Mauricio Rojas. 

Throughout history, artists both carved jade boulders and kept them intact in order to honor their mountain origins. The jades in this gallery echo their natural source materials in mini landscapes that were admired for their beauty as well as for the way in which they encapsulate the relationship between man and nature.

In conversation with the jades is the artist Lam Tung Pang’s immersive work, Mountains de-bonding. The monochromatic mountainscape is an ode to shan shui forms of Chinese brush and ink paintings. Lam Tung Pang also creates a landscape that is simultaneously real and imagined, combining motifs from a series of Chinese woodblock prints of sacred mountains. Lam’s technique and choice of plywood is inventive. The yellowish tone of the plywood could be seen as paying homage to the luster of aged rice paper found in many ink landscapes. The material of plywood is unassuming and is often associated with popular art and everyday objects such as construction material.

According to Lam, “The landscape is like a mirror; it forces a reflection. When you go into nature, you think about life.” Monumental in scale, each wood panel features rapid brushstrokes that are nearly abstract. However, on closer inspection, each stroke builds up the vocabulary of a mountain landscape.

Both the historical jades and Lam Tung Pang’s Mountains de-bonding use the idiom of mountains to comment on ecological changes in the environment. Both genres invite introspection and challenge visitors to see nature anew.

On view on the UT Dallas campus.