Art / 藝術 評李金遠畫作：流光與幽暗的對搏 161 Li Jinyuan's Paintings : a Struggle between Darkness and Light Benoît Vermander Somehow, every painting is a trade-off between darkness and light, and this is especially true for Chinese painting, where the ink and the paper seem to be always in the process of negotiating the proportion of space that black and white will finally occupy, water mediating between the two protagonists. But it has always seemed to me that, in the paintings of Li Jinyuan, the trade-off between darkness and light becomes actually a struggle, and that this struggle is the very topic of the paintings. If I am not mistaken, I have seen paintings encompassing the whole career of Li Jinyuan up to his present stage: his first paintings on the steps of his master Feng Jianwu (馮建吳) ; his patient exploration of the various regions of Sichuan, through which he found his personal style; the vivid paintings done during and after his travels in France and Thailand; the new exploration of the highlands of Abba and Liangshan that followed; the series made on the road of Matteo Ricci from the south of Italy to Beijing; recent and more abstract paintings that mix together ink and golden acrylic. Beyond the diversity of time, space and style, if I had to classify his works I would put them very simply into two categories: dark paintings and light paintings, each series complementing the other one.