"Li Jin in Oxford" originated from Li Jin's Solo Exhibition "Simple Pleasures: Li Jin with Roger Law", which opened at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford in May 2024. The exhibition, centered around the theme of Li Jin's artwork, presents a journey of discovery of Chinese ink art from the perspective of the museum. The Ashmolean Museum, located in the heart of Oxford, UK, is recognized as the world's first public museum. Through centuries of operation and donations from collectors, it has formed an extensive collection of art spanning thousands of years from ancient Egypt to the contemporary era. Li Jin's solo exhibition was held in the 11th gallery (Khoan and Michael Sullivan gallery) named after the renowned art historian Professor Sullivan.

The exhibition "Simple Pleasures" showcases works by Li Jin donated by the famous British artist Roger Law. After meeting Li Jin in the late 1990s, Roger immediately embarked on a friendship that has lasted for nearly three decades. For Roger, Li Jin represents an important cross-section of the contemporary Chinese art process. His works, filled with feasting, fantasy, and the joy of life, are both a celebration and an introspection of an era where material life is increasingly enriched. They also represent a fresh wisdom full of vitality, based on tradition, using brush and ink as an index to outline the textures of life that are either passionate or leisurely.

Li Jin has always faced the unknown with an open posture. It can even be said that he excels at confronting the unfamiliar, from which he generates boundless energy for life and creative passion. As he wrote in his morning lessons, "Waiting for dawn", he never presupposes the annoyance brought by right and wrong. He once said, "If you make a mistake, it's best to make it at the beginning and incorporate it into the painting as an image." Thus, in this series of paintings that grew in the UK, we see Li Jin dressed as an English gentleman, listening to the choir, sharing delicacies with Roger, and seemingly as usual, pondering in his morning lessons. He embraces everything about his trip to the UK, eagerly throwing himself into a completely different environment, tacitly understanding and instantly connecting with the scene. Li Jin allows his body to be released here, allowing the freshness and surprise seen by the eye to serve as a kind of nourishment, which he excitedly picks and rubs into his works, interweaving with the sediment of the past, reaping a more enduring vitality.

Li Jin and Oxford (Pinyin: Niu Jin) is not only a meeting between a Chinese ink artist and the British classical tradition but also a self-consistency between the frank and straightforward enjoyment and the serious and upright traditional paradigm. It is also a knowing smile between the old self that is constantly immersed in the unfamiliar and the new self that is subtly reshaped.

Every taste of Jin is savored, and every tale of Jin is widely celebrated.