WANG DONGLING – NEW WORKS
2015-10-05In the new body of works dating from 2015 in the present exhibition, Wang has achieved a new level of freedom of expression. Although they refer to poems and texts from the Tang and Song dynasties, sometimes just focusing on several characters, the meaning resides in the unmistakable character of Wang’s calligraphy. Whether nearly filling the sheet of paper or canvas with dense accumulations of brush strokes or less densely applied skeins of strokes of varying degrees of intensity, Wang’s calligraphies are immediately recognizable. In a discussion of this form of calligraphy, critic Gao Shiming has observed that “writing becomes pure trace. Thus the corporality and the gesture of writing becomes the essence.”
Wang Dongling (b. 1945 in Rudong, Jiangsu Province) is currently Director of the Modern Calligraphy Study Center at the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China and is one of China’s foremost living calligraphers. Calligraphy is one of the oldest living art traditions in the world and Wang has been intimately associated with it since early in his career, studying with the master Lin Sanzhi (1898-1989). It was from the classical training he received under Lin that he acquired the confidence to experiment with ways in which the calligraphic stroke might be liberated from the simultaneous conveyance of meaning.
Opposite – Li Bai-Drinking Alone, Unaware of Sunset, 2015
Exhibition runs through to October 24th, 2015
Chambers Fine Art
522 West 19th Street
New York
NY 10011
