Tang Contemporary Art is proud to announce Tang Contemporary Art is proud to present the latest solo exhibition for Wang Yuping, entitled On the Roadside, which will open in the gallery's first Beijing space on November 6 (Saturday).
Curated by Acheng, the exhibition will showcase several important recent works that Wang Yuping has painted from life, including the 30-meter-long On the Roadside made over four years and the nearly six-meter-long Jingshan in the Rain and Snow, as well as Jingshan Park, which he painted at age 16. Watchtowers and noodle shops, clear days and snowscapes, crows and feral cats, and the vivid charm of Beijing flow from Wang Yuping's brush.
Humanity has never ceased to be interested in colour. Even in Chinese ink painting, artists pursued a range of dark and light effects in black, white, and gray, stressing the concept of the five tones of ink. However, black and white are not actually colours; they are simply the darkest and lightest shades.
During the classical era prior to the Impressionists, inherent colour dominated European painting. However, in the Low Countries, primarily the Netherlands, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, artists from Jan van Eyck to Johannes Vermeer contributed to the use of colour-based gray. Their depictions of colour-based gray almost achieved the effect of modern photo film, far surpassing the level of skill demonstrated in Renaissance Italy.
Colour-based gray is gray that is mixed with two or more colours and not the gray produced by combining black and white. Most people are unaware of this, though it is common knowledge among professional painters.
These two Dutch painters accurately and reliably depicted the colour-based gray of masonry, wood, wall plaster, and metal illuminated by light from a window. During this time, painters produced their own pigments, so the study of colour was the study of paint, and colour was comprised of the three primary colours: red, yellow, and blue.
We seem not to realise that the light here is an imitation of reflected light: the light shines on an object, which then reflects the light to the viewer. The realistic light effects of classical painting match with our everyday experience.
During the Industrial Revolution in Europe, Impressionism developed in France. Optical physicists declared that visible light was comprised of blue, green, and red, which was an earth-shattering discovery. The later development of the colour television was based on this principle. People often do not realise that televisions produce direct rays of light. The screen is luminous and shining directly in to our eyes.
Monet did not use the methods of classical painting in his work (Figure 3), but the light effects were quite intense. In his paintings (Figure 4), Seurat employs the principles of visible light; he uses coloured dots to create intense light effects. The Impressionist painters essentially created the effect of direct light. Their images also have a luminosity to them, but it is not that of the light shining on the image then reflecting into our eyes.
A revolution took place when the imitation of reflected light in classical painting shifted toward the luminous objects in Impressionist painting, which imitated light shining directly at us.
In the early twentieth century, Édouard Vuillard (Figures 5 and 6) used a colour-based gray that differed from that of classical painting and the Impressionists' 'objective' colour-based gray. He added highlights to his paintings by combining this gray with modern unmixed colours.
Édouard Vuillard's colour-based gray is much brighter. This development was already notable in the work of late classical painters, such as Anders Zorn, who had been influenced by the Impressionists.
I believe that this lineage of colour-based gray is the historical source for Wang Yuping's way of painting and the modernity of the colours in his work. The modernity of Wang's painting is also conveyed in his use of unmixed colours.
Unmixed colours are made from unmixed paint. The shamanic era in human history saw the greatest use of these unmixed colours. Colour psychology today still utilises experiences from that past: red represents passion and blue represents sadness.
Unmixed colours have become protagonists in modern and contemporary art (Figure 7), and the large-scale use of shamanic unmixed colours (Figure 8) has meant a corresponding reduction using colour-based gray. In this context, Wang Yuping subtly utilises colour-based gray, while also boldly applying unmixed colours. When he uses colour-based gray and unmixed colours together, the colour-based gray intensifies the unmixed colour—this is what makes Wang stand out among contemporary painters.
For those of you who can appreciate both the development of colour-based gray in painting and the subversiveness of contemporary unmixed colours, Wang Yuping's accomplishments in painting will be obvious.
I do not want the enjoyment of this exhibition to be reserved for the dinner after the opening, nor do I want this short essay to mediate your enjoyment of the show, because I believe everyone will gain something from this exhibition.
Curator: Acheng. Press release courtesy Tang Contemporary Art.
D06, 798 Art District
No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road
Chaoyang District
100015, Beijing
China
www.tangcontemporary.com
+86 105 762 3060
+86 105 978 9379 (Fax)
November – April
Tuesday – Sunday
11am – 5:30pm
May – October
Tuesday – Sunday
11am – 6:30pm