The VIP Space at Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok is proud to announce the opening of “Wang Huangsheng: Beyond Images” on October 10, 2019. This solo exhibition will present three of Wang’s ink painting series: Shifting Form, Daily Lesson, and Tracing Vision.
“Meaning beyond words,” “interest beyond charm,” and “images beyond images” were considered the highest aesthetic standards of the traditional Chinese literati. In the Southern Qi text The Record of the Classification of Old Painters, Xie He wrote, “If one sticks to their manner of rendering objects, then one will still not see this pure essence (in their work). But if one takes from (a point of view) beyond the forms, only then may one enjoy their rich quality to the full. And this may be called a delicate and subtle manner.” This means that, when a painter creates a painting, he must break through superficial resemblance and paint the life and temperament of nature and highlight his lofty emotions. Here, the images, because they are established with the artist’s references to beauty, lie beyond images.
Line is a key element in Wang Huangsheng’s art, and in his work, lines do not simply delineate or outline physical forms; they are tangled together, without beginning or end. They are dynamic lines that guide the eye through space. In traditional Chinese painting, artists wanted to use line to show their mastery of the brush and ink, employed in the service of the rhythmic aesthetic of perfectly skilled brushwork. Since Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, line in Western art has become reckless and animated, liberated from its place as a foundational element of modeling. Wang Huangsheng’s lines spring from the fusion of these two traditions; his controlled skill in moving the brush makes the lines sparse yet expressive, but he also pursues the purity and spontaneity of the lines themselves.
In Daily Lesson, Wang Huangsheng injects colors such as yellow, purple-red, green, and red into flowing cursive script, emphasizing the painterly qualities of this script. The texts are fragments of poems written by the artist in the 1970s, revealing his spontaneous thoughts and emotions. Katie Hill noted that Daily Lesson invokes “the daily internal rhythm of the mind as a meditative activity in the discipline of calligraphy, necessitated by the need to practice as a daily ritual for the attainment of ‘cultivation’ and enlightenment…” The works thereby become a second nature in which Wang can find respite.
In the free linear series Shifting Form and Tracing Vision, as well as the combination of flowing cursive calligraphy and color in Daily Lesson, Wang attempts, through visible form, to liberate ideas from their finite physical shapes, thereby reaching an infinite realm “beyond images” and finally glimpsing spiritual freedom.
About works
The Shifting form series emphasizetion, which is a combination of self-cultivation, moralcharacter, artistic conception and craftsmanship, includes control and self-control; on theother hand, “freedom”, which is inaction, unrestrained, boundless and independence，is more about pursuing of breaking control, and achieving the freedom of the spirit.Between the two ends which are seemingly paradoxical, it may lies the tension among life, being, work and Art.
“Daily-Practice”is a way for Chinese to cultivate cultures. We would waste thousands of paper sheets justfor practicing calligraphy, but poetry writings are more like playing a game of expressing emotions. In this work, I rewrote some classical poetries created by myself in the 1970s, and during this Daily-Practice of calligraphy, I rereadand released my feelings of being a youth who had a classical sensibility.
Tracing Vision Series is my new work in 2016, which has a relationship to my earlier work Bound. In the installation work Bound, I used cotton gauze wrapped around the barbed wire, and the behavioral process of wrapping was made a video work of performance art. While in Tracing Vision Series, the print of the thrum of the cotton gauze and ink, constitute a metaphor for injury and protection, restoration and sublimation, with the realistic and cultural information on the newspapers and rice paper. The delicate, fragile and sensitive prints, providea subtle contrast for the streaming lines, blocks, ink and water on the painting. All of them revealed my special attention and concern for reality and life.
