王川 Wang Chuan China, b. 1953

Wang Chuan (born in Chengdu in 1953) received BA in Traditional Chinese Painting from Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 1982. He currently lives and works in Shenzhen, New York and Chengdu.

 

Wang Chuan is a key figure in the Scar Art movement. He began his early career as a successful realist painter and turned to abstract painting during the 1985 New Wave period. In the late 1990s, sudden illness brought Wang Chuan to a turning point that transformed painting into his personalized spiritual practice. The energy at work in his recent work arises from contrasts of scale, density, line and surface. This kind of introspective and self-reflective way of working has enabled Wang to achieve insights, especially through the contemplation of oriental philosophy. This spiritual experience cannot be merely obtained from art history per se or any other motivations for the sake of art. Wang is inspired by many. He transferred the line on Xuan paper from traditional Chinese art onto canvas. In his painting, the graffiti, doodling and drawing can be observed. The abstract and figurative elements are also on the surface, and it is as if Wang Chuan is suspicious of the purity of abstraction and he is equally suspicious of the power of figuration.

 

With many solo exhibitions, not only in mainland China but also in the USA, Germany and Taiwan, Wang Chuan’s work has been the subject of discussion in many books by some of the most prominent scholars of Chinese painting, including Gao Minglu, Li Xianting, Wu Hung, Lv Peng and Pan Gongkai, as well as by Western critics such as Robert Morgan and Britta Erickson. His work can be found in many collections, including British Museum, London, UK, Soar Foundation, Fremont, USA, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Los Angeles, USA, The Hefner Collection, Los Angeles, USA, The National Museum of Finland-Ateneum Museum of Finland, Helsinki, Finland, Museum Ferrari Maranello, Maranello, Italy, UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art), China, Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, M+ Contemporary Art Museum, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, China, Long Museum, Shanghai, China, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, OCT (Contemporary Art Terminal), Shenzhen, China, Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, Shenzhen, China, Hubei Museum of Art, Wuhan, China, Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, He Art Museum, Shunde, China etc.