Into the Immensity of the Cosmos: Wang Shaoqiang's Solo Exhibition

仰观与俯察

——王绍强艺术的观看方法与语言逻辑

王绍强的艺术实验与探索，肇始于上个世纪九十年代以来中国文化艺术界“文化寻根”热潮的余波。当时的中国当代水墨艺术发展，既要回应自“五四”新文化运动以来文化民族主义的身份诉求；又要面对当代艺术普世化与全球化的所谓“当代性”压迫，进退维谷，处境异常尴尬。标榜传统笔墨的新文人画与急于进入当代的抽象水墨，可以被视为当时艺术思潮和创作的两个典型案例。基于对中国文化传统的热爱和信心，王绍强独具慧眼，逆流而动，观有品无，以一种打通中西古今艺术的胸怀和观今见古的文化立场，借鉴西方现代科学精神的利器，对中国水墨艺术、特别宋以后的文人画传统进行了系统的研究和反思，并在水墨艺术与地理学、地质学、人类学、考古学等学科的跨界互动和交融中，以当代艺术的视野从媒材、物理和制作性等维度，对传统进行了富于创造力和想象力的重构，发展出一套独特的视觉语言逻辑和艺术观看的工作方法。在王绍强的探索中，水墨文化传统的延续和激变在当下现实中构成了富有张力的两极。艺术家对世界的“观看”，也通过“仰观”与“俯察”的宇宙漫游，由神话进入历史，从仙境落入人间。

王绍强的艺术，把“俯仰”观看模式及其所产生的人生体验理想化为人生之至乐境界，也是其艺术心灵的物性表现。也就是说，王绍强艺术的“俯仰”观看模式、方法与语言逻辑所开创的日常生活方式，本身就就是一种艺术的物性表现。这是由“俯仰”模式所创造或形塑出来的自由心灵的挥洒方式，其作品不过是这种“俯仰”方法、模式的象征形式与物性符号，心手相应，无法而有法，天马行空，心与物游而不滞于物，这是心灵自由的表现，也是宇宙万物的法则与秩序。以心观物，以身观心，王绍强的艺术正在慢慢的通过或接近这样的自然法则和宇宙秩序。

Into the Immensity of the Cosmos

- Artistic Methods of Viewing and Linguistic Logic of Wang Shaoqiang's Art

Wang Shaoqiang's art experiments and explorations began in the 1990s with the aftermath of the ‘cultural root-seeking’ craze in the Chinese art world. At that time, the development of Chinese contemporary ink art was forced to respond to the demands of identity from cultural nationalism since the May Fourth New Culture Movement; at the same time, it had to face the so-called ‘contemporaneity’ oppression of contemporary art's universalisation and globalisation, which traps itself into an exceptionally awkward situation. The New Literati Painting, boasted of traditional brush and ink, and the Abstract Ink Painting, eager to enter the contemporary era, can be regarded as two typical cases of artistic trends and creations at that time. Based on his love and confidence in the traditional Chinese culture, Wang Shaoqiang cultivated a unique insight, which helped him move against all the obstacles, hence observing what is good and what is not. With a cultural stance of connecting ancient and modern art between China and the West, the present and the past, drawing inspiration from the spirit of modern Western science, Wang Shaoqiang has conducted a systematic study and reflection on Chinese ink art, especially the literati painting tradition after the Song Dynasty. He has also studied and reflected on the relationship between ink art and geography, geology, anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines. A creative and imaginative reconstruction of tradition has been carried out from the perspectives of contemporary art, including media, physics, and production, which helped him develop a unique set of visual language logic and artistic viewing methods. In Wang Shaoqiang's exploration, the continuation and upheaval of ink art culture tradition constitute a tense bipolar situation in current reality. The artist's ‘observation’ of the world is also achieved through the cosmic wandering of ‘looking up (to the universe)’ and ‘looking down (to the fine dust)’, entering history from mythology and falling into the human world from Utopia.

Wang Shaoqiang's art idealises the mode of viewing "up and down" and the life experience it generates into the most joyful realm of life, which is also the physical manifestation of his artistic mind. In other words, Wang Shaoqiang's art is a physical manifestation of his artistic mind. This is the way of free mind created or shaped by the mode of ‘up and down’, and his works are just the symbolic forms and physical symbols of this ‘up and down’, where the heart and hand are in tune with each other, and there are always routes, even seemingly nonexistent. This is a manifestation of the freedom of the mind, as well as the law and order of all things in the universe. Viewing things with the mind, viewing the mind with the body, Wang Shaoqiang's art is slowly passing through or approaching such natural law and cosmic order.

Curator: Guan Yuda

2023.7.1