WANG CHUAN

Roger Fried has categorised “line” into “structural” and “calligraphic”. Western artists often use line as a turning point for “surface” to construct or break down a pictorial plane. It is structural, accurate and modifiable, whereas the “line” in Chinese painting is more of a natural push of the brushstrokes, withered and wet, thick and thin, starting and ending, it is calligraphic, self-contained, not overly accurate, non-modifiable and non-replicable. It is true that both the Chinese and the Western have different perceptions of “line”, and painters are trying to break out of their cocoons: to find a true “structure” and “unity” while making the relationship between line and form more fluid.

Wang Chuan has also respected this structure and the four borders of the picture for many years, although he never points to a specific object. He runs along the frame, and his awareness of boundaries enhances the impact of the central image. Wang Chuan’s perception of structure does not come from calligraphy per se, but rather a calligraphic fashion. One reason is that the fluidity of lines is naturally linked to handwriting. Wang Chuan’s images are composed of a variety of dots, and the dots are connected to each other, giving the lines an indeterminate sense of movement in space. The singular lines span the entire surface of the painting, and if we look closely, we can determine the order brought about by the dots. Lines overlap, interpenetrate and pause in space as the body’s rhythm changes and moves slowly, all of which require the artist to have an entire master of the structure. Then there is Wang Chuan’s belief that the essence of handwriting is the movement of the body to tell the inner impulses, and that this outpouring is one-time and instantaneous. Painting is even a physiological drive for Wang Chuan, maintaining a constant movement over time, forming a muscle memory and returning to a state of creation that requires extreme labor. Therefore, Wang Chuan’s calligraphic linearity is not necessarily causally related to calligraphy per se.

At the same time, for Wang Chuan, geometric culture is not directly related to the West. Briefly speaking, the ink wash is concerned about the back and forth of the tip of the brush, such as zhongfeng technique (literally as “centered-tip”) and cefeng technique (literally as “slanted-tip”). However, drawing or painting the line on canvas can be really free and easy, and its hardness and thickness are able to write out. In contrast, things on paper are more concerned about the thickness of the ink and brush, so how to master these two things mainly depends on how the artist thinks about the possibility of painting, the possibility of language.

Therefore, it is meaningless to roughly attribute Wang Chuan’s creative style to East or West, abstract or figurative. His painstaking exercise is a pure expression that strives for a state of unconsciousness that is infinitely close to that of a child. Adults, through their elaborate empiricism and acquired conceptualizations, are constantly corrected to achieve inner “rightness,” while immediacy is seen as an error that contradicts the primordial vitality of the child’s world. Painting requires a sense of vividness, and to go deeper you have to go beyond, otherwise you can’t constitute its thickness. At the same time, the process of painting releases many private personal experiences, and this privacy is exactly what Wang Chuan wants his works to present.