Wang tianliang’s Lacquer Art

The recent series of lacquer works from Wang tianliang entitled Lacquer• Utensil • Pneuma joins in this new collective,allows more friends see his creativity and persistence in lacquer.As an old friend of him, I feel really happy for him! His enthusiasm towards lacquer art holds a fame in contemporary lacquer art field. In the last 20 years,all his life and work connects with lacquer.He teachs lacquer, inherits the traditions of lacquer,has been organzing and participating a variety of activities concerns lacquer.He is absolutely devoted into the research and creation of lacquer art, so delightful and energetically, he sets a commitment for lacquer.

Lacquer art is actually a “slow-job”, only through a strict process of crafts can result in some works.On a certain extent, no matter how much the lacquer art developed, fundementally it’s still a classic art, not only thanks to its history and inheritage, its agricultural shape and language, but it’s born from the combination of material and time.During the process of creative generation and scientific technique, patience and respectation towards the material, media and crafts characteristics are required.Wang as a man lives in today, experienced some conflicts inbetween the contemporary ideology and classic one, he becomes a bridge to link the contemporary context with the classic spirits, creats renovation of classic patterns applying contemporary language.His productivity comes from his passion towards lacquer art, the works are like elves wearing colorful dresses, flying out from the deep darkness, transform into musical notes which compose a symphony of today’s life.

There’re three obvious features of Wang’s lacquer works. First, his general style can be referred as abstract expressionist in contemporary lacquer arts, carries the artisitc language of expressionist and abstract painting method.He try very hard to find a bridge point of classic spirit and contemporary formal language, shows a spiritual engergy and creative track in expressing freely from point to line and then plane. He is well talented for painting, and continued painting during his lacquer creation, so he is good at applying painting language on lacquer material.Although this is the basic mode of lacquer painting, while since his painting style is expressionist, it’s quite difficult to achieve on the lacquer material,but thanks to his rich experience in lacquer arts and involving spirit, he expresses profoundly with the combination style of abstraction and impressionsit on the lacquer material.His wisdom and humor shown in his contemporary crafts creation in the process of handmade and repetation of vanishing, the works are highly inspiring in artistic expression and rich in creative methods, which contribut to the contemporary development of lacquer art.

Secondly, through the lacquer art, Wang combines the atmosphere usually carried by the Chinese classic arts together with the aroma of contmpoerary arts, we can find the mysterious universe conception from Han Dynasty’s arts and weird implication of painting in his works,a longing towards the original vivid enthusiasm from the remote antiquity, those frog-shaped patterns, variants of ancient characters and repetitive ordering of images revealed a innocent romance and naïve art. While besides a brilliant sensation, he manages a minimal cut of contemporary aesthetics and constructual elements of the image, which enables the works to naturally broadcast the traditions of Chinese lacquer and import them into contemporary.

He elastically express on plain and three-dimension with multiple materials, combines space, lines and plains flexibly in lacquer art.His works developed from lacquer painting to sculture then shield, not only a constant renovation of crafts materials, but an extension of vision and imagination. On one hand, he use Utensil to discover the invisable Pneuma,make utensil in different shapes and modules as the media for the lacquer spirits, enrich our knowledge about lacquer art. On the other, he extends the practical fields of lacquer arts, let it be accessable to further daily spaces in today’s life.

What encourage him continues the creation in lacquer can be concluded into the following tow aspects: one is his knowledge and loyality towards the essence of lacquer culture, he noted ‘The pneuma is the biggest feature of lacquer,it’s not utensil, it’s very spiritual’, so what he pursues is the general pneuma from figurative to painting strokes, maintains a grandure aroma and mysterious attraction from the traditional lacquer color, while brings a much sensitive formal language of his own, so the works embrace both academic connotation from tradition to contemporary. Second, he persists in lacquer art belongs to the category of contemporary art. Although he stays in the kingdom of lacquer as his orientation, while he pays quite much attention on the development of contemporary art, he’s quite open minded and pratical,lives and senses the detailed changes happen in everyday’s life and art, include fashion trends and aesthetical tides, work with a free style, so a vibrate “human freedom” can be found his works.These come from his personality, input with a knowledge of contemporary “freedom”, which all can be sensed in his works.In terms of this point, Wang’s art is not only what he’s passionate about, but an important way to reconstruct the local contemporary art ecology.

Fan di’an
Chief of National Fine Arts Museum,Beijing,China
July 26th 2011