Where: Caixaforum
When: 4 June – 21 Sept 2008

The artists in this exhibition use the Chinese concept of Yi: an exercise in contemplation of surroundings, or the actual matter of the materials, through which they reach a deeper comprehension. According to the exhibition brochure, this represents “the creators' state of contemplation and meditation, the way in which both artists and poets think about and observe their environment”. It is the key to looking at many of the artworks here. The artist enters a zone of contemplation where creation begins.

Chinese abstract art should not be too tightly linked to ideas on Western abstraction, or the compulsive, revolutionary breaking with the old that the latter represents to many people. Abstraction here stems from a deep-rooted tradition through which Yi creates an “alternative path”, addressing upheavals in society and culture that have occurred in China over the last thirty years. Yi remains an organic product of culture and environment, arising as much from a blend of Zen Buddhism, traditional philosophy and other autochthonous, aesthetic disciplines as from the influence of Western modernity, or contemporary, conceptual art.

This strong, traditional basis is present in materials and colour. Works are executed in the subtle ochre or sienna hues of natural pigments with few strong primaries. Yi becomes an exultation of the natural world over the man-made. Natural forces affecting the artificial, such as rain falling on paper. Such works often form a vehicle for protest, an expression of discontent at the political restrictions among which the artists lived and worked.

In Meng Luding's early work, Primordial Movement [1988], these bulging, organic masses, oozing over and around each other convey a strong sense of movement, of a formative process. Here geometric shapes are placed in harmonious conjunction, given rein to create pictorial effects such as landscapes or rivers, literal identification of a kind Western abstraction rejects.

Likewise, Yu Youhan's Sphere Series [1984-12] conjures up the soft tones of charcoal daubed on white clay, reminiscent of hand-fired pottery, a flattened sphere inviting the viewer to drift into the allusions.

The cultural importance of calligraphy in Chinese culture is paramount. Many pieces play with this association – a subconscious acknowledgement of black ink strokes sweeping a blank paper field. One of the largest and most powerful canvases draws strongly on this discipline. Gu Wenda's Myths of Lost Dynasties [1985], a huge work of ink on rice paper, sets out to destroy the ideological authority of traditional Chinese characters by changing their shape. Written across the canvas, deformed letters read: “Illumination comes from contemplation”. A manifestation of Yi's traditional yet radical nature.

He Yunchang's Rock Touring Around Great Britain [2007] appears more playful, demonstrative of the exhibition's wide range of styles. It is a lighter piece than some of his other installations. The artist carried a rock around the United Kingdom, photographing it in every place he visited, before returning it to its beach of origin. Is he commenting on our own belief in permanency or displacement, on the nature of migration in our modern world, or simply having a joke at the earnest viewer's expense?

Other pieces are passionate in their intensity. In Existence No. 115 [1985-86], Zhang Jianjun captures, through the horizontal, lineal progression of his canvas, a sense of the repeating journey, the ultimate, the only journey we ever undertake. Contrasting black and whitedisks create a sense of rushing movement, invoking a sense we are hurtling to meet our destiny, like a black comet falling into oblivion, which appears as a womb, or as a doorway of light. It simultaneously conveys the threat of impending collision even as it suggests the birth of the new cycle.

Equally violent is Meng Luding's Stupid Power [2006], two, rough, grey circles cleaved by slashes of bright pink on black and white grounds, respectively. An important concept to recall here is the symbolism that Eastern spatial philosophy exercises in Chinese culture, as divorced from the geometric forms to which we give significance in Western culture. Although a two-dimensional surface, these representations of the sphere correspond, in traditional Chinese culture, to the origins of the universe. “Qi” is a ball of intense energy, concentrated into the primordial chaos. This is art of protest, the fundamental cycle of energy shattered by the intruding human violence of the synthetic, pink paint.

Yet one of the most powerful works in the show appears to break all these rules. Ding Yi's piece from his series Appearance of Crosses97-14 [1992] is brazen in its use of colour while self-consciously deliberate in claiming and reshaping Western iconography (Scottish tartan). We might interpret it as a kind of visual, Deleuzian “deterritorialisation”, taking something familiar to Westerners (and to Chinese, if the Burberry invasion has reached there as well as Japan) and making it strange. Ding Yi begins his canvases by dying the stretched tartan a uniform colour, displacing it from the traditional colour scheme. He then works in an apparently random manner, using four fluorescent colours, over-painting the tartan with tiny crosses. The effect is riveting, creating a swirling panorama of luxuriant colour to swamp the senses.

Despite this year's Beijing Olympics and the sizeable community which now calls the Ciudad condal home, we still remain largely ignorant of the Chinese culture. This exhibition brings us closer. Yi – this attuned meditation on the physical environment– carries both creator and viewer into a wider universe of significance. Whether Yi as a concept is strong enough to bind these practitioners together so they can be considered a school is debatable, especially over the duration of this thirty-year period. However, the art itself speaks of a healthy creative scene, of a richly contrasting landscape of artists. Yi School – 30 Years of Chinese Abstract Art is a unique window onto some of China's best contemporary art.