How is Chinese ink painting explored in contemporary art? RedBox Review in discussion with Liang Quan

CHINESE INK CHINESE ARTISTS ARTIST INTERVIEWS

In a conversation with Chinese-based art blog RedBox Review the artist Liang Quan (b. 1948), living and working in Shenzhen, China, explains how ink painting is used in contemporary art and how this exploration continues to follow the philosophy of traditional Chinese painting.

Liang Quan is considered as one of the pioneers of contemporary ink painting.

“Ink painting”, also known as “wash painting”, was developed in China during the Tang Dynasty. Ink painting or shui-mo hua in Chinese (水墨畫) is composed of water,  shui and Chinese ink, mo. In Western art, using similar techniques, it is known as drawings.

 

Liang Quan, 'Tea Stain No. 3', 2008, ink and paper, 63.8x48 cm.

 

In this conversation Liang Quan highlights to RedBox the difference between ink painting and ink art:

The exploration of using ink and referring to the tradition of Chinese painting is part of a greater narrative to define a cultural identity.

American contemporary artists like Brice Marden and Cy Twombly inspired Liang Quan while he was living and working abroad. On top of using ink painting and water, Liang incorporates paper into his works.

Liang’s ink painting seems abstract but in reality he follows the philosophy of this art. He aims to capture the soul of the subject rather that trying to reproduce the exact appearance of it. As he relates to RedBox,

My use of collage, combining strips of ink and/or tea stained paper, may seem abstract to the unknowing eye, and without direct correlation to a depiction of reality. But my works, collages, are actually diagrams of traditional Chinese landscape paintings and the Chinese still life painting genre of birds and flowers.

 

Interesting difference between ink painting in West and East: perspective

Having explored ink painting in Western art, Liang Quan observed a major difference between it and Chinese landscape painting: multiple points of perspective are used where Western painting uses only one or two.  As he relates to RedBox,

To view a Chinese painting, one’s eye usually follows the flow of water from the bottom of the mountains as it meanders farther into the hills and up the composition of the painting.

Following this philosophy and adding paper strips and color makes Liang’s painting abstract.

After exploring the multiple points of perspective in Chinese landscape painting, Liang Quan combined this concept with the ideals of Nan Pai, also known as Southern School. As said in the RedBox article,

By addressing the theme of Chinese tradition, he is distinguished from his contemporaries choosing to use painting as a depiction of or social response to modern society.

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Related Topics: Chinese artists, definitions, ink

Related Posts:

• Wilson Shieh revitalises ancient Chinese painting techniques – video – September 2010 – an overview of a ChooChoo TV interview with the artist
• Gao Minglu’s maximalist exhibition blurs boundaries between traditional and contemporary Chinese art – June 2005 – an excellent profiling of a little-known movement in Chinese art
• Liu Kuo-sung London retrospective inspires potential British Museum collection – May 2010 – a brief post on the works that inspired this interest
• Chinese ink artist Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian shows 80 works in Spain – Guardian, Int Literary Quarterly – January 2009 – an exhibition alluding to a number of contemporary art world trends
• New York gallery launches series 15 New Chinese Ink artist solo shows – Yishu – October 2008 – outlining a number of solo shows with details on a special show by Wei Ligang

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Wilson Shieh revitalises ancient Chinese painting techniques – video

HONG KONG ARTISTS CHINESE INK PAINTING VIDEO

Art Radar Asia brings you another video (length 5:22 minutes) from Internet channel ChooChooTV’s show [art]attack. This one features Wilson Shieh, one of the few full-time professional artists working in Hong Kong. Specialising in gong-bi, or fine-line, Shieh is admired for creatively merging traditional Chinese painting techniques with modern art elements. In the video on ChooChooTV, Shieh talks about how he develops his unique style of painting and creates intriguing works with it.

“Before I learned the fine-brush technique, I considered this style as just a kind of antique craftsmanship. But after all, as you can see, I have adopted the fine-brush manner in my work. The ancient sense of beauty looks fresh to contemporary eyes.” Wilson Shieh, as quoted on Crown Point Press

Wilson Shieh at work.

While pursuing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shieh became interested in gong-bi paintings, which inspired him to create an unusual style of work.

Experimenting with the combination of old and new

Since gaining his bachelor’s degree in 1994, Shieh has been working on figure paintings. One of the traditional Chinese painting techniques which Shieh has been using in his works is lin-mo, which involves paper-scanning figures onto traditional gong-bi paintings.

To introduce modern elements in his works, Shieh replaces the ancient costumes of the scanned figures with modern clothing. He also experiments with nude bodies, taking the work “back to basics and nature” and removing the sense of time. An example of this is “Musical Family” (2008), a set of paintings in which nude bodies imitate instruments.

Click here to view more videos from ChooChooTV show [art]attack and read our summaries of them.

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Related topics: Hong Kong artists, ink painting, videos

Related posts:

• Anti “commercial” art, Luk Tsing Yuen comments on corporate greed: video – August 2010 – also from ChooChoo TV’s [art]attack, watch the Hong Kong artist share his anti-commercial art
• Your interpretation or mine? Hong Kong artist Chow Chun Fai reflects in video interview – July 2010 – also from ChooChoo TV’s [art]attack, watch the Hong Kong artist share the paradox of meaning of art
• Gao Minglu’s maximalist exhibition blurs boundaries between traditional and contemporary Chinese art – June 2010 – discusses maximalist art and artists in the context of an exhibition
• Liu Kuo-sung London retrospective inspires potential British Museum collection – May 2010 – reports British interest in the works of one of the founders of the New Ink Painting Movement
• gallery EXIT a new Hong Kong gallery to watch – May 2010 – introduces a new high quality Hong Kong gallery

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia to for more videos on comtemporary Asian artists

Liu Kuo-sung London retrospective inspires potential British Museum collection

As reported by various Taiwanese media outlets, the British Museum has recently expressed interest in collecting works by Chinese/Taiwanese modernist Liu Kuo-sung.

This interest follows a well-received mini-retrospective of 25 of the artist’s paintings at London’s Goedhuis Contemporary. The museum is reported to be interested in acquiring two paintings: Rising Sun, a colour painting from 2008, and Sun and Moon: Floating? Sinking? from 1970.

Liu Kuo-sung, Midnight Sun, 2005, ink and colour on paper, on five panels

Liu Kuo-sung is known as one of the founders of the New Ink Painting movement. Curator Michael Goedhuis explained that “Liu was the first ethnic Chinese artist in the late fifties to study Western art diligently. He spent forty years to create a new artistic language by importing Western artistic concepts into classical Chinese culture.”

Liu Kuo-sung, Heaven Lake, 1982, ink on paper

The artist was born in China but moved to Taiwan in 1949, where he studied fine art at the National Taiwan Normal University. Early on, Liu experimented with abstract oil paintings before developing a unique work practice in the mid-1960s in which he applies ink and colour on special paper. His work is represented in 52 museums and art collections around the world.

KN

Related Topics: Taiwanese artists, Chinese artists, museum collectors, ink painting

Related Posts:

• Taiwan’s “father of printmaking” Liao Shiou-ping wins national award – profile – March 2010
• Which museums are collecting Chinese contemporary art? New database just released – November 2009
• Wu Guanzhong retrospective Singapore Art Museum – New York Times review – May 2009
• Chinese ink artist Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian shows 80 works in Spain – Guardian, Int Literary Quarterly – January 2009
• New York gallery launches series 15 New Chinese Ink artist solo shows – Yishu – October 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more on museum collection news

New York gallery launches series 15 New Chinese Ink artist solo shows – Yishu

Wei Ligang

CHINESE NEW INK

Goedhuis Contemporary will launch a series of 15 solo artist shows devoted solely to the modernist and avant-garde practitioners of the New Chinese Ink Painting with a special show of works by Wei Ligang (b. 1964 Datong City, Shanxi) at its New York gallery from September 25 – October 18.

A selection of Wei Ligang’s works will also be featured at Goedhuis Contemporary exhibitions in October at the Hong Kong International Arts & Antiques Fair, the International Art + Design Fair, and International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show in New York, and at two Miami shows in December, Art Miami and artAsia.

It is difficult for the West to realize how much courage is required for a Chinese artist to in any way tamper with the hallowed calligraphic formulae evolved by past masters over the last 2000 years. Wei Ligang’s paintings constitute no less than a new pictorial language in which his abstract characters allude to, but also have broken away from, the logic of tradition and emerge in beautiful, relaxed new structures of line and form.

While calligraphy has been the defining feature of Chinese culture, linked to music and dance and ranked alongside poetry as one of the highest forms of Chinese art, it is also a tremendously powerful vehicle for expression in these revolutionary times in China’s political and social history. Wei Ligang goes so far to claim that the only completely Chinese art form today is abstract calligraphy, written on Chinese paper in Chinese ink. Wei Ligang is among the leading artists engaged in a great aesthetic challenge to ensure that this most revered art form can develop so as to be relevant and meaningful not just to China, but throughout the world.

The emphatic Chinese-ness of Wei’s work, which springs in part from his desire to resist the overwhelming influence of Western art, derives from his concern to evoke echoes of the past by de-constructing and re-configuring ancient scripts while still alluding to them through his brush-work and fluctuating densities of ink. Wei Ligang’s objective is not to provide textural gratification but to stimulate the viewer to enjoy the magical transformation of a historical tradition with a continuous intellectual life of more than 3,500 years.

See

• original Yishu story
• Hong Kong Musuem of Art and Manchester Triennial have recently featured New Chinese Ink see more posts on ink
• more about calligraphy inspired contemporary art

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New Singapore museum officially opens with contemporary Chinese ink exhibition

Nan Qi Riding Series 23

 

 

 

NEW MUSEUM CONTEMPORARY INK EXHIBITION to 7 September 2008

Just behind the busy streets of Orchard road in Singapore, The Luxe Art Museum occupies two floors of the newly-built Luxe building, with a total of seven hundred square meters of exhibition space and state-of-the-art lighting and display facilities. It officially opened on 6 August.

In affiliation with Yisulang Art Gallery, the Luxe Art Museum aims to propel contemporary Chinese fine arts to the forefront of the art world across Southeast Asia and beyond; by building a representative permanent collection and exhibiting renowned art thus providing a platform for critical fine art research and debate.

Its inaugural exhibition “Chinese Desires” shows contemporary Chinese ink painting by Li Jin, Associate Professor Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Wu Yi lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Nan Qi a professional artist from Beijing.