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Thick ink captures heavy subjects
By Xu Wenwen |
May 3, 2012, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SUPER-THICK, super-gooey ink is seldom used in Chinese paintings and calligraphy, yet artist Huang Jun uses only this material to create pieces that combine the water-and-ink feel of Chinese painting with the texture and line of Western styles.
Huang, 46, deputy director of public art department of China Academy of Art at Hangzhou, has studied art in China and Europe and is well-known for paintings made from Chinese materials but featuring a strong Western spirit.
His solo exhibition "Super-thick Ink," under way at Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery, illustrates this unique style well.
"Super-thick ink carries an experimental spirit, a strong expressive force that resonates with Western painting's figurative expressionism," says Huang, who, before 2008, made many color Chinese paintings in Western style, before turning to super-thick ink.
"The exhibition is a conclusion to a phase. Every artist has different phases and I am concluding the accomplishment of my objectives in this period with this exhibition," says Huang.
The show is a collection of Huang's recent work, bold and abstract ink paintings rendering both traditional subjects, such as mountains and rivers in landscapes, and more modern subjects for the medium, like human figures.
At the entrance of the gallery is "Dark Face," a series of nine portraits of miners that embodies the visual impact of the super-thick ink works.
Each portrait is a close-up of miners in Shanxi Province - an area known as the home to coal mine - where Huang spent a fortnight observing miners.
"I stood at the exit of mines and took pictures of miners who just crawled out from the mines. Mine exits are on the border of light and dark, and the border of death and life," Huang says.
He turned those photographs into the series of paintings, with the nine pictures capturing different facial expressions: some pleased; some scared; some confused; and some with ambiguous looks that visitors may read differently.
And all of the faces are dark, featuring dark eyes, noses, mouths and ears, set upon an even darker background. Due to the thickness of ink applied, some parts of the surfaces are cracked - a rare occurrence in usually delicate Chinese ink paintings.
"People can see Huang's exquisite and sophisticated skills in these works," says Yang Jinsong, an art critic and professor in China Academy of Art. "He takes only one ink to create a strong visual impact, using a non-ink-and-brush method to create ink-and-brush paintings."
Despite working with Chinese materials, Huang makes lots of abstract paintings of human bodies - a typical subject of the Western tradition.
A wall-sized work, "Visual Angle 2010," consists of 12 pieces, each more than 2 meters tall and featuring human figures seemingly concealed behind dark, thick ink.
The artist expresses both the oriental and occidental spirit of art - in some works human figures combine with mountains and waters landscape - traditional subjects of Chinese painting.
"In Chinese painting, the moistness and the consistency are like yin and yang that needs to be in balance and in unity. Using super-thick ink this is hard to achieve, but I'm trying my best," Huang says.
The difficulties presented by the super-gooey material Huang chooses to work in are detailed in a documentary playing at the exhibition that goes through the creative process step by step.
Firstly, Huang paints on standard rice paper, which is semi-transparent and thin, using an ordinary Chinese painting brush and super-thick ink, without water added.
Secondly, he pours water on the paper, to create a fluid composition. "It is an uncontrollable process, and sometimes I fail," Huang admits.
If Huang is satisfied with the end product, he fixes it on a wall and sprays water to make adjustments before finally applying ink again to finish.
"The first stage of painting creates a composition similar to landscape paintings, while in the subsequent stages I adjust the composition to add human figures. This is just like the process of how people merge into nature," Huang says.
Date: through May 9, 9am-4:30pm
Address: No. 52-1 Yan'an Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8782-5633
Huang, 46, deputy director of public art department of China Academy of Art at Hangzhou, has studied art in China and Europe and is well-known for paintings made from Chinese materials but featuring a strong Western spirit.
His solo exhibition "Super-thick Ink," under way at Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery, illustrates this unique style well.
"Super-thick ink carries an experimental spirit, a strong expressive force that resonates with Western painting's figurative expressionism," says Huang, who, before 2008, made many color Chinese paintings in Western style, before turning to super-thick ink.
"The exhibition is a conclusion to a phase. Every artist has different phases and I am concluding the accomplishment of my objectives in this period with this exhibition," says Huang.
The show is a collection of Huang's recent work, bold and abstract ink paintings rendering both traditional subjects, such as mountains and rivers in landscapes, and more modern subjects for the medium, like human figures.
At the entrance of the gallery is "Dark Face," a series of nine portraits of miners that embodies the visual impact of the super-thick ink works.
Each portrait is a close-up of miners in Shanxi Province - an area known as the home to coal mine - where Huang spent a fortnight observing miners.
"I stood at the exit of mines and took pictures of miners who just crawled out from the mines. Mine exits are on the border of light and dark, and the border of death and life," Huang says.
He turned those photographs into the series of paintings, with the nine pictures capturing different facial expressions: some pleased; some scared; some confused; and some with ambiguous looks that visitors may read differently.
And all of the faces are dark, featuring dark eyes, noses, mouths and ears, set upon an even darker background. Due to the thickness of ink applied, some parts of the surfaces are cracked - a rare occurrence in usually delicate Chinese ink paintings.
"People can see Huang's exquisite and sophisticated skills in these works," says Yang Jinsong, an art critic and professor in China Academy of Art. "He takes only one ink to create a strong visual impact, using a non-ink-and-brush method to create ink-and-brush paintings."
Despite working with Chinese materials, Huang makes lots of abstract paintings of human bodies - a typical subject of the Western tradition.
A wall-sized work, "Visual Angle 2010," consists of 12 pieces, each more than 2 meters tall and featuring human figures seemingly concealed behind dark, thick ink.
The artist expresses both the oriental and occidental spirit of art - in some works human figures combine with mountains and waters landscape - traditional subjects of Chinese painting.
"In Chinese painting, the moistness and the consistency are like yin and yang that needs to be in balance and in unity. Using super-thick ink this is hard to achieve, but I'm trying my best," Huang says.
The difficulties presented by the super-gooey material Huang chooses to work in are detailed in a documentary playing at the exhibition that goes through the creative process step by step.
Firstly, Huang paints on standard rice paper, which is semi-transparent and thin, using an ordinary Chinese painting brush and super-thick ink, without water added.
Secondly, he pours water on the paper, to create a fluid composition. "It is an uncontrollable process, and sometimes I fail," Huang admits.
If Huang is satisfied with the end product, he fixes it on a wall and sprays water to make adjustments before finally applying ink again to finish.
"The first stage of painting creates a composition similar to landscape paintings, while in the subsequent stages I adjust the composition to add human figures. This is just like the process of how people merge into nature," Huang says.
Date: through May 9, 9am-4:30pm
Address: No. 52-1 Yan'an Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8782-5633
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