Wang Ai: Flying Over Ancient Landscapes

Abstract

Poet-critic and art curator Mai Mang curated a solo show Wang Ai: Flying Over Ancient Landscapes at Connecticut College in 2017 and wrote this exhibition article introducing Chinese artist Wang Ai to his new audience for the first time in North America. Simultaneously possessing a highly experimental and self-reflective sensibility and also an intuitive and indigenous upbringing, Wang considers himself a contemporary artist exploring boundaries of tradition and modernity. In 2008, inspired by the Northern Song landscape painter Fan Kuan’s masterpiece Travelers among Mountains and Streams, Wang decided to experiment on paper, re-engaging the great Chinese landscape painting tradition and searching for a new style and direction, which resulted in his ongoing series Flying Over Ancient Landscapes (2009–present). Often calling his style “polyphonic,” Wang weaves a labyrinthine universe of ancient landscapes, animals, and scriptural texts, which are juxtaposed with contemporary elements and demonstrate the fascinating and captivating contradictions embedded in Wang’s identity as an artist.While presenting the dark, the obscure, the invisible, and the unsayable, Wang’s art is traditional and contemporary, humanistic and spiritual. Once placed in a context of the new millennium where violence and confusion can be rampantly abstract yet inescapable, the seemingly decorative or stylistic elements in his art will bring out new surprises. They will reveal their poignant edges, and stir resonance across the borders of nation-state, culture, and language.