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East and West meet on a white wall
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“ORIENTAL Abstraction vs Western Figuration: A Dialogue between Tan Ping & Luciano Castelli” is on display at Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute Art Museum.
Originally, the exhibition planned to showcase the artworks of Tan Ping from China and Luciano Castelli from Switzerland as a dialogue between East and West. However, due to transportation issues, Catelli’s paintings were delayed, leaving a “white wall” at the ongoing exhibition.
“When Tan proposed to me if it would be possible to conduct an exhibition ‘from white wall to white wall’ I immediately agreed,” said Xiao Gu, director at Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute. “The two artists would paint directly on the white wall, and most importantly, they would paint together. Sometimes their curves and patterns would overlap.”
According to Xiao, all the paintings on the wall will vanish when the exhibition ends on April 12.
“This is such a daunting and rare show,” said Fu Jun, vice director of the art museum. “I was thrilled the moment I heard about it, as it broke with regular practice. Now what the visitors find on the wall is all created by the artists within five days. It is especially interesting to put Tan’s abstract artworks with Castelli’s figurative artworks together for a dialogue exhibition.”
Occupying an area of 1,600 square meters, the two artists treat the white wall as their canvas. They both need to echo the painting created by their counterpart, the visual effect of the arrangement of the painting and its relationship with the whole space.
“The challenge is obvious. They have to destroy, merge and reach a new balance,” Fu concluded. “For example, sometimes the figurative painting created by Castelli such as a woman’s face or big eyes are entangled with the curves and lines painted next to it by Tan.”
Castelli painted the first round, then Tan worked on the next. Both of them needed to study each other’s strategies and find a way to cope with the situation.
“When some works were done smoothly, they laughed and shook hands to finalize them, while sometimes they were challenged by complicated situations, competed fiercely, painted round and round, consequently presenting works with richer layering and fuller pictures,” Fu said. “The scenarios of collaborating on art creation is a living picture of the globalized world, even if the cultural systems and economic structures of (their native) countries are different. They work together and understand each other. The two artists opened their mind and their pleasant cooperation in creation provides us with a paradigm of co-existence not only for art, but for the human beings across the world.”
Date: Through April 12, 10am-5pm
Venue: Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute Art Museum
Address: 111 Jinzhu Rd
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