Tang Jinhao’s historical background

Oriental Imagination - Tang Jinhao and Modern Painting 1

In the 21st century, any artist with an international vision must face such a dilemma: as soon as the outline is drawn up, the world The appearance is already mottled. Perspective has lost its focus, proportions lack reference, and the only light is no longer unique. The light of the soul and the light of nature are entangled, and everything is generated in changes and disappears in changes. From the speed of gears to the speed of optical fibers, the depth of black holes and the breadth of nebulae, for the Milky Way and the solar system, people no longer imagine and speculate with myths, but measure with the speed of light... The physical era of artists has ended, and the chemical era Such an era has just arrived. With Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rodin underground, they will also be caught off guard: Where is the eternal golden ratio? Where is the mysterious thread that runs through the universe?

Over the past 100 years, "modernism" and "postmodernism" have emerged one after another. The modernization that was just proud and had a good chance of winning suddenly became full of doubts and worries.

This is an artistic era of mixed joys and sorrows.

Tang Jinhao's "breakout" will also face another challenge: how to imagine the Eastern artistic spirit on the "modern" stage.

II

For Tang Jinhao's works, picture frames are redundant and even harmful - his works themselves are a challenge to limitations, all they need is space, any A kind of space, "European style" or "Chinese style", which can be juxtaposed with sofas and fireplaces, or with armchairs and tables. Whether it starts from Genesis in the Bible or from Zhuangzi's Happy Journey, it will not hinder the free development of any kind of sentiment.

They have an amazing adaptability, they are quiet and modest, wordless and eloquent. They change the space in silence and scatter all kinds of subtle information from it. They often become the rulers of the space instead of Just as a decorative supporting role. This "world" is disappointing to the eyes that want to search for stable objects. It has no attributives, no tenses, no prepositions. Its grammar and rhetoric are ancient but new.

The winding path leads to the secluded place, where the dark annual rings are intertwined and reciprocated, the shadow of the sun lingers on the blue and white porcelain, the shadow of the moon ripples, the cycle of three lives, all in an instant. The songs and laughter of the ages, thousands of rivers with water, thousands of rivers and moons wandering in despair, the finger pointing to the moon is just an ambiguous gesture, sitting on the top of the mountain, that finger has turned into a road sign, heading south, north, east, west ?Toward the past to the present?Toward the heart!

Using simple elements to construct images is in line with mankind’s spiritual journey of searching for the basic elements of the world for thousands of years. The West has air, water, fire, and wind, and the Chinese There is water, metal, fire, wood, and earth.

Consciousness, subconscious, memory, imagination, yearning, emotion, history, future... In the fading time and space, mountains and earth, rivers and oceans, heroes and saints, war and peace, eternity And disillusionment is nothing more than a trace, a wisp of smoke to the universe. Heaven and hell are just peaks and troughs formed by the movement of the physical body. It is also a ladder, up or down, sublimated or degraded, with the same mind and the same body. "Abstract" has "image", and Tang Jinhao focuses on the creation of "image".

In the swirling whirlpool of images, Tang Jinhao combines the free rationality of the West with the life spirit of the East. This kind of expression of life sentiment points to both classical and modern connotations, and its method is both Eastern and Western. There is Faust: "You are approaching again, and your shapes are wavering, just like before, before my confused eyes." Show yourself, this time, I will try my best to catch you." The tragic and enterprising style also has Zhuangzi's "Heaven and earth are born with me, and all things are one with me. Now that we are one, how can we say anything? That's it. It’s just that, and I’m speechless?” This is a kind of optimism and self-adaptation. There are various causes and conditions behind the birth of this new painting language. The artist regards himself as the hand searching for the light rope, and those works are just a monologue under the moment of light.

Tang Jinhao’s paintings approach the spiritual world of modern people from both the east and the west. He extracts alum from the container of the times and uses it to precipitate and clarify the physical and psychological aspects of the 21st century.

Three

Modernization is the common destiny of mankind. Among the global effects of modernization, the stress response of regional ethnic culture is even more complex and subtle than economy and ideology, especially for oriental nations represented by China, which have relied on a culture that has survived for thousands of years. , philosophy, life concepts, and artistic spirit have been on the defensive or even at a disadvantage in the world trend of the past century, but muteness does not mean absence or withdrawal. After painful internal adjustments and external absorption, its rebirth process is in line with the strong Western modernity. Due to various difficulties, civilizations want to break through and transform, and they have reached a tacit psychological understanding: the curves of the fate of the two cultures tend to merge at such a historical node, which is the fundamental basis for the dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures.

In the 1980s, Tang Jinhao began to create using comprehensive visual media such as gelatin, batik, photography, and serigraphy. When abstract painting came from the East, his painting style changed. "Flowers in the Mist Series" and "Galaxy Series" mark the initial formation of his personal style of abstract painting; the "Blue Mountain Series" created in the mid-1980s originated from a trip to mainland China. "The theme of choosing mountain scenery is to focus on the mountains." "The tranquility and aura"; In the 1990s, Tang Jinhao settled in Australia. During this period, the "Inspiration" series he created marked the maturity of his painting art...

This is the beginning of Tang Jinhao's abstract painting. The general outline of the three stages of brewing and maturity.

If Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun are representative Asian abstract painters of the 1960s who were based in Europe, Tang Jinhao is a representative painter of the 1990s who was based in Asia and embraced modern art. They are both abstract oil painters. In terms of era, they follow each other in succession, and in terms of direction, they follow the same strain. A vertical comparison of their artistic creations is, in a sense, a microcosm of the exploration of Asian abstract oil painting in the 20th century.

IV

Tang Jinhao believes in the article "Exploration of Modern Painting": "Due to the rapid development of human civilization, new inventions and realizations have emerged one after another, and the concept of life has also followed. As for improvement, old laws and viewpoints are no longer able to do anything. New concepts and laws must emerge in response to the times. Modern painting is a product of the times. It uses new viewpoints and laws to express our impressions of natural things. The subject matter is no longer limited to locality, but tends to be global."

In Tang Jinhao's early works, silk screen, glue color, batik and other media were mixed, and the oriental mood was mainly reflected in the pastoral style. In the decorative style, we can appreciate the author's good understanding of oriental art, especially the Chinese freehand ink painting tradition. However, the works of this period are also due to the superimposed use of oriental symbols and over-emphasis on decorative styles, so that the works are mostly sketches, which are both in terms of the devastating visual impact of Western modern art and the muddy and profound realm of Eastern art spirit. All performed poorly. Comparing the works of Tang Jinhao in his mature period, we cannot help but sigh: "Integration of Chinese and Western" as an academic pursuit is a simple sentence, but for an ambitious modern artist, it has a long and arduous time, space and psychological journey. He needs to conquer.

After the artistic preparation period, "Galaxy Series" shows a truly modern painter Tang Jinhao from brewing to explosion. He abandoned the "Oriental symbols" with only folkloric indicating meanings and the static oriental decorative flavor, internalized it into the perceptual vortex of oriental sentiment, and opened up a new visual space with the oriental outlook on life and universe. Abandoning the hesitation between color ink texture techniques and oil paints, using Western colors as generals, the Eastern freehand brushwork and ink spirit retreat behind the scenes, strategizing as space counselors.

From the metaphysical philosophical level to the metaphysical technical level, he constructed a kingdom of color in the modern sense. This kingdom spans the east and west, and its territory covers ancient and modern times. It takes the concept of freedom and liberation as its rule, and uses compassion for nature and humanity. , optimistic and enterprising humanistic sentiments as beliefs... Among them, Cézanne and Pollock should have contributed to the expansion of territory and the founding of the country.

Cezanne said: "For painters, only color is real... There is a logic of color... rather than following the logic of the mind... The content of our art, It basically exists in the thinking of our eyes.”

The “color” here is no longer a metaphysical medium and technique in classical painting, it has a new metaphysical dignity. Tang Jinhao inherited Cézanne's concepts and reflected on the traditional concepts of Chinese painting and the "brushwork" system and spatial concepts derived from it from the perspective of modern art, hoping to complement the two and combine them to create a new style of modern painting. realm.

The natural attributes of oil paintings, pigments, canvases and pens are coverage and texture of brush strokes. It is a "barrier" space-time construction. In Chinese painting, the natural properties of rice paper, pen, ink, and water are the mutual compatibility and the fluidity of the traces of pen and ink. It is a time-space presentation of the "network".

Because of the medium and philosophical concepts, Chinese painting focuses more on the inward exploration of "mental images". Its vertically penetrating and ethereal qualities make it not care about the objects and shapes displayed horizontally in the picture. Just like contemplating an ancient well and deep pool, the image on the water is not the most charming, but the "underneath" is the charm (this can also explain why Chinese painters are obsessed with misty landscapes). At the same time, the ancient Chinese's emphasis on "brushwork" gave this unique oriental painting style the rational constraints to avoid completely falling into "randomness".

In addition to the Western tradition, the East has another set of creations for the spatial form of painting on a two-dimensional plane.

As for color, China's unique color concept of "ink divides into five colors" is also based on a profound philosophical background. The aesthetic concept of "mental image" requires that everything should be based on inner observation as the starting point, and the individual's life rhythm and " The unity of "Tao" is the supreme goal, and nothing else can overshadow it. The simplification of the color scale leaves room for the vitality of energy.

Since the "Galaxy Series", Tang Jinhao's use of colors has become simpler.

The canvas cannot be as permeable as rice paper, but it strengthens the Eastern emotion and rhythm of color blocks and textures. This sense of rhythm undoubtedly absorbs the "pen and ink" view of Chinese painting. This view of pen and ink is not rigid after the Song and Yuan Dynasties. The technical system of "pen and ink" that has been eliminated, but the spirit of pen and ink that carries philosophical significance, is the presentation of mental images under the control of spiritual energy and materialization energy. The pursuit of this mental image is also the liberation of oil paints and Eastern philosophical concepts. The intervention of aesthetic concepts has enabled modernist abstract oil painting to truly embrace the East and West.

Tang Jinhao selectively gave up the physical technical and material factors of Eastern art step by step (he even used airbrush as ghostwriting) to test the vitality and adaptability of the Eastern art spirit. What is intriguing is that the Chinese aesthetic tradition has long proposed "taking images from relics" and "the use of pens has no beginning or end". The Chinese artistic spirit that is most opposed to rigidity and typing has been completely shattered by rigidity and typing in recent centuries. This is a paradox.

Five

Western modernist painting, from its inception, has begun to turn to the exploration of the world of consciousness. The canvas is no longer a single reflection interface of the real world, and the spiritual world has begun to surge. emerge.

The emergence of Pollock is undoubtedly a strong boost to this process. Tang Jinhao believes that the greatest inspiration to him from Pollock's automatic painting methods and concepts is the painter's active intervention in the subconscious state.

Pollock described his creative method: "I prefer to hang the canvas without tension on a rough wall or floor. I need the friction generated by the rough surface... Once I get into painting , I am not aware of what I am painting, and only after I finish it do I understand what I have done... The painting has a life of its own, and I try to make it appear naturally."

"Rough"" "Friction" and "things that have nothing to do with painting" and "let it appear naturally", peel off the material shell of the soul, let all purposeful attempts stay far away, the free presentation of consciousness is the free presentation of painting, which is undoubtedly the hallmark of modernist painting One of the important turning points. But Pollock still needs a kind of help to enter this unconscious state, such as rough friction or even the power of alcohol to suppress the strong rationality.

Oriental art has been wary of the destruction of free and lively moods by reason from the very beginning, and even Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen have created a whole set of means and methods of "entering tranquility", such as "undressing heavy clothes" and "quiet contemplation". "Tacit observation" is a psychological description of a benign creative state. Orientals have a rich tradition of exploring the spiritual world, and the ideal of great harmony of "harmony between man and nature" has always been clear.

When Tang Jinhao creates, "his mind is blank and he works improvisationally. He sprays the color directly on the canvas with an airbrush based on his intuition. It can be oil canvas, paper or wood board." But if that's all, can all painters switch careers to be artists? The difference is that the silence in the painter's heart at this moment is the prelude to the passionate symphony of vitality. The moment the emotional vortex bursts out, everything becomes Combining raw materials, pigments, and textures are processes of natural presentation and spontaneous combustion. The painter does everything. The laws of art and human experience are nothing but fuel. The new world illuminates itself! Paintings are nothing but the cooling of a blazing fire. It is a crystallized product, but when a pair of destined eyes encounter it unexpectedly, the flames will burn again...

Art is the history of human soul that is different from text. The annual rings they form are It is different from the chronology of numbers. The reading of the text is similar to imagining the original flame from the ashes, while the artwork is more like amber, in which the sunshine from many years ago is contained, the wind and rain are dim, the wings and feathers are like this... Mr. Tang Jinhao's work should be like this. A piece of amber, because it vividly presents the unfolding process of Asian imagination expressed by a 21st century painter in the language of painting: wind and cloud meeting, atmosphere and rainbow.

(Zhang Yang at Dalian Chenzhongxuan on March 20, 2012)