Past Exhibition
Abstracted Visions
01 Jul - 31 Jul | 2008
Introduction
Wang Chuan
Born in 1953 in Chengdu, China, Wang began painting during the Cultural Revolution. After entering the Sichuan Art Academy in Chongqing in 1978, he studied traditional Chinese painting and also worked with oil in the Social Realist style. While serving as art editor and photographer for the magazine Modern Art from 1982-84, Wang soon discovered an attraction to ink as a medium of expression. Experimented with the diverse properties and possibilities of ink, he explored the boundary between calligraphy and abstraction. He began with merging calligraphy forms with abstract shapes, gradually dissolving calligraphic characteristics leaving only the abstract form. He has been exploring the relationship of abstract form and space ever since.
Wang has held a number of solo and group exhibitions, mostly in China, Hong Kong and the United States. These include Wonders of Chinese Abstraction with other masters such as Zao Wou-ki at Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong, in 1995, The First Biannual Exhibition of Chinese Art, Guangzhou, China, and Looking East, New York, USA.
Jiang Dahai
Jiang Dahai was born in 1949 in Nanjing. He received his masters from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1980. He moved to France in the 80’s and studied at L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Jiang explored the theme of East-West synthesis. In France he was first inspired by the cloud pattern of the Parisian skies, the central theme of his paintings. The works are a mixture of natural and abstracted forms in harmony with each other on a 2D surface. His forms tend to be minimalist but powerful in their simplicity. After many years of searching for an icon closer to his roots, he began to write/paint Chinese characters and sometimes landscape painting on rice paper, afterwards mounted on canvas. Playing on the texture of the paper, dryness and wetness of the brush, Jiang fragments and reconstructs the Chinese characters so they dissolve into a hazy mist and become ‘rhythmic, mysterious and abstract images’. His lively toned ink paintings and oils paintings are all characterized by light shades with a single colour, sometimes deep black or light grey reminiscent of the hutong alleyways of old Beijing. Jiang held solo exhibitions at the Shanghai Art Museum and Beijing’s National Art Museum of China, and joined other exhibitions in New York, Taipei, Italy, Korea, etc.
Born in 1953 in Chengdu, China, Wang began painting during the Cultural Revolution. After entering the Sichuan Art Academy in Chongqing in 1978, he studied traditional Chinese painting and also worked with oil in the Social Realist style. While serving as art editor and photographer for the magazine Modern Art from 1982-84, Wang soon discovered an attraction to ink as a medium of expression. Experimented with the diverse properties and possibilities of ink, he explored the boundary between calligraphy and abstraction. He began with merging calligraphy forms with abstract shapes, gradually dissolving calligraphic characteristics leaving only the abstract form. He has been exploring the relationship of abstract form and space ever since.
Wang has held a number of solo and group exhibitions, mostly in China, Hong Kong and the United States. These include Wonders of Chinese Abstraction with other masters such as Zao Wou-ki at Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong, in 1995, The First Biannual Exhibition of Chinese Art, Guangzhou, China, and Looking East, New York, USA.
Jiang Dahai
Jiang Dahai was born in 1949 in Nanjing. He received his masters from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1980. He moved to France in the 80’s and studied at L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Jiang explored the theme of East-West synthesis. In France he was first inspired by the cloud pattern of the Parisian skies, the central theme of his paintings. The works are a mixture of natural and abstracted forms in harmony with each other on a 2D surface. His forms tend to be minimalist but powerful in their simplicity. After many years of searching for an icon closer to his roots, he began to write/paint Chinese characters and sometimes landscape painting on rice paper, afterwards mounted on canvas. Playing on the texture of the paper, dryness and wetness of the brush, Jiang fragments and reconstructs the Chinese characters so they dissolve into a hazy mist and become ‘rhythmic, mysterious and abstract images’. His lively toned ink paintings and oils paintings are all characterized by light shades with a single colour, sometimes deep black or light grey reminiscent of the hutong alleyways of old Beijing. Jiang held solo exhibitions at the Shanghai Art Museum and Beijing’s National Art Museum of China, and joined other exhibitions in New York, Taipei, Italy, Korea, etc.