// BLURB //
What’s the first thing you think about when you hear the phrase “abstract Chinese art”? Is it Wang Dongling’s gestural calligraphy? Is it Zhang Huan covering himself in fish oil and honey and letting bugs crawl over his body? Or maybe it’s more recent, Wang Tiande’s paintings under burned paper, allowing for a modified and limited viewing of classically styled Chinese art. Whatever you think of, the mantra is always the same. Form over content. Process over product. And they’re right, borrowing from a Daoist tradition that is so ziran, so natural. Do what you’ve practiced, do what feels right and don’t force a thing that doesn’t need to be forced. It’s funny though—the very specificity that these artists choose not to rely on becomes in itself disclosive. The practiced naturalness of their movements tell us about their pasts, broadly and in detail. In the aggressive wrist flicks that send paint flying to spatter onto canvases. In the patient drips onto canvas as they envision one here, three there, a little on that side, and not so much in the third-quarter. In the massive strokes that were their childhoods, their first marriages, their mother’s words…it all comes through, somehow. And as Eric Liu says, “We’re all better off…when we’re all better off”.
What’s the first thing you think about when you hear the phrase “abstract Chinese art”? Is it Wang Dongling’s gestural calligraphy? Is it Zhang Huan covering himself in fish oil and honey and letting bugs crawl over his body? Or maybe it’s more recent, Wang Tiande’s paintings under burned paper, allowing for a modified and limited viewing of classically styled Chinese art. Whatever you think of, the mantra is always the same. Form over content. Process over product. And they’re right, borrowing from a Daoist tradition that is so ziran, so natural. Do what you’ve practiced, do what feels right and don’t force a thing that doesn’t need to be forced. It’s funny though—the very specificity that these artists choose not to rely on becomes in itself disclosive. The practiced naturalness of their movements tell us about their pasts, broadly and in detail. In the aggressive wrist flicks that send paint flying to spatter onto canvases. In the patient drips onto canvas as they envision one here, three there, a little on that side, and not so much in the third-quarter. In the massive strokes that were their childhoods, their first marriages, their mother’s words…it all comes through, somehow. And as Eric Liu says, “We’re all better off…when we’re all better off”.
//EDITION, MEDIA, SIZE & WEIGHT//
Unique Edition, Shanghai 2019
Chinese ink and acrylic painting on canvas, teakwood frame
176(W)×141(H)×6.5(D) cm // 15.8 kg (framed)
//EXPOSURE//
“Perimeters, Edges, and Walls” at island6 Shanghai Main Space
Unique Edition, Shanghai 2019
Chinese ink and acrylic painting on canvas, teakwood frame
176(W)×141(H)×6.5(D) cm // 15.8 kg (framed)
//EXPOSURE//
“Perimeters, Edges, and Walls” at island6 Shanghai Main Space
//CREDITS//
Owen 欧文 (painting) • Thomas Charvériat (art direction) • Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁 (production supervisor) • Carlin Reinig (blurb)