Lao He selfie
Wu Guoquan, also known as Lao He and, is a painter and one of the leading figures in contemporary ink painting. He came to prominence in the 1985 "Chinese Youth Painting Exhibition in Progress" and was a member of the art movement in the new era. He participated in "'85 Tribute", "1986 Hubei Youth Art Festival", "China, Japan, Germany and the United States Touring Exhibition", "Italian School - Chinese Abstract 30 Years Exhibition", "Ink Thinking 09 Chinese Contemporary Ink Painting Annual Academic Invitation Exhibition", "Water + Ink: The Transformation of Ink Modernity from asian Perspective", "The Scale of Freedom - The Fifth Chinese Contemporary Ink Painting to Europe", "The Second Invitation Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Artists", etc. His works have traveled from the mainland to Taipei and Hong Kong, and have been purchased by many overseas institutions and collectors in Italy, the United States and Germany. He was elected "Artistic Person of the Year" by Ku Art for two consecutive terms in March 2021 and February 2022.
Jia Tingfeng
Jia Tingfeng, a famous curator and founder of Taihe Art Space, has studied ink art for more than 30 years, organizing and curating hundreds of ink art exhibitions. In the past ten years, he has unswervingly discovered and discovered contemporary ink artists with innovative qualities and unique languages, and has pushed more than 30 outstanding artists to the Chinese and foreign art stages, enjoying the reputation of "Art Bole". With cultural ideals and extraordinary eyesight, he sought out "art believers" in the margins of little attention, and pushed their works of art to the famous art halls at home and abroad, so that the world could re-understand from contemporary ink painting the possibility of realizing contemporary transformation of traditional Chinese culture.
On March 19th, Beijing 798 Taihe Art Space held "Trial of the Air - Exhibition of Lao He's New Works". Taking this opportunity, I gave an in-depth interview with wu guoquan, the artist of the exhibition, and Jia Tingfeng, the curator of the exhibition.
"Strangeness" makes us think and expect
Ding Xilin: Every time I watch Wu Guoquan's (Lao He) works, there are always surprises. As a veteran of the art world, his expression is constantly evolving and extending, and the artistic medium involves paintings, pictures, videos, performances, installations, texts, etc., almost "playing everything that can be played", which is often impressive and full of expectations. May I ask you both, what is the opportunity that made you meet and meet each other, and feel sorry for each other?
Wu Guoquan: Actually, we are a "four-person alliance", and in addition to Lao Jia and me, there are Liu Guangxia and Huang Chengzhong. In 2016, when they came to my house to see the works, I prepared several types of works, including calligraphy that evolved from Chinese wild grass, and figurative paintings, but only a few works on cardboard that showed the special effect of "small pieces of paper" touched them. At that time, the four people also had different opinions, and finally slowly unified their views: only the rare "strangeness" in the art world made everyone have unlimited associations and expectations.
From left to right, they are Liu Guangxia, Jia Tingfeng, Wu Guoquan (Lao He), and Huang Chengzhong
Jia Tingfeng: To know Lao He, first of all, I would like to thank my old friend Liu Guangxia for more than 30 years, whose repeated recommendations have contributed to our acquaintance and friendship. We admire Lao He's tenacious pursuit of art for more than 40 years, and we suggest that he concentrate on a single point. In the past four or five years, Lao He has been unable to receive anything, and has truly found his own artistic language, which has surprised us again and again. He turned the past upside down and was full of confidence. He strives for the ultimate in his own creation, the language is clear, rich and simple, remarkable!
Ding Xilin: Ink art is the most stylized art form. Contemporary art has undoubtedly also promoted the reform and progress of traditional ink art, which is the mainstream of development. But it is undeniable that, on the one hand, the "baggage" of contemporary ink development is very heavy; on the other hand, the confusion of concepts leads to mixing. Where is the boundary between the subversion, change and development of contemporary ink painting?
Wu Guoquan: We must admit the fact that before the reform and opening up, there were very few artistic materials that the Chinese people could see, including traditional Chinese works of art, let alone know their good and bad. The Western ones also know a little bit about the skin of Impressionism. Later, in the past 100 years in the West, various genres, ideological trends, literature, film, photography, etc. have been introduced, and once they came like a tide. It is not too much to describe my state of mind as "hungry and thirsty" at that time. It is no exaggeration to say that at that time, I was a bit like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden.
So far I haven't thought about how to promote traditional art, and I seem to lack a sense of mission in this regard. But there is one thing, I have indeed been deeply moved by the works of Bada Shanren, Xu Wei, Ni Yunlin, Muxi and so on. Ink painting is such a broad and rich "field". I didn't start out narrow or pedantic enough to limit myself to the use of traditional rice paper, brushes, and ink to accomplish my visual communication. I think that Chinese contemporary art, through the impact of the "Eighty-Five-Year Thought", has learned about the road that people have traveled for more than a hundred years, and now it is our turn to "go to war" and we should also be a teacher.
Jia Tingfeng: I have been engaged in ink art for more than 30 years. Initially plunged into traditional ink painting, it later switched to contemporary ink painting. So far, I have organized and curated hundreds of exhibitions of ink artists, including in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. This process is also an "experiment", during which I always want to break through and explore bitterly. I believe that the development of contemporary ink painting in China faces two major mountains, one is how ancient traditions are both promoted and abandoned, rather than being completely inherited; and the other is the "oppression" of contemporary art from so-called Western standards. I think there will be a new way between the two. But where is the road? What about boundaries? To sum up, there are two points. First, we must have an oriental temperament. There are differences and commonalities among the cultures of various ethnic groups in the world, and contemporary Chinese ink painting must be full of distinct oriental temperament. It exists in the cultural bones of Chinese. Second, in today's art, for contemporary ink artists, the breakthrough may lie in the transformation of concepts and materials. Ink expression materials do not have to be only brush rice paper.
Ink creation is like "soup", which needs to be slowly simmered over a low heat
Ding Xilin: Lao He has been practicing art for more than 40 years, has experienced a variety of media art expressions, and has made good achievements, which are recorded and commented on in Gao Minglu's "History of Contemporary Chinese Art" (published by Shanghai People's Publishing House in 1991). What is the basis for today's Lao He's choice to flash around in an extremely narrow radius of expression? What heights have been achieved artistically?
Wu Guoquan: I am doing visual arts, and the task is to do visual articles in the way of visual communication, and I don't want to paint a certain painting and do a certain installation. I am not good at English, I have studied the first book of English textbook no less than ten times, and the 26 alphabetical order is also unfavorable, so I am afraid of going abroad and am a "dirt bun". When I was in college, because dancing always stepped on people's feet, and because my English was not good, I spent more time squandering on calligraphy, practicing lines wildly, and copying some of my predecessors' sketches. When I didn't have money to buy a book, I borrowed it and copied it on transparent paper.
I myself feel that I don't have any reading skills, and I still can't type in pinyin or drive, and I am stupid in these aspects. I also hide some quirks and hobbies that I don't want to show. For example, I would frantically collect hundreds of thousands of pictures; practice tens of thousands of line drawings alone behind closed doors; I loved to listen to books and took many notes about the books I listened to. For art experiments, I bought a few tons of paper for "art research." In addition, my most pastime is to watch movies, all kinds of movies, from popular to elegant, different "graded" movies. I still have some stupid things to wait for later. For many years, I have actually been making a bowl of soup, and the so-called "soup" is to put a lot of ingredients together and slowly stew over a low heat.
Jia Tingfeng: As I said earlier, the breakthrough in the development of ink painting may lie in the transformation of concepts and materials. Lao He's conversion was more successful. He no longer uses rice paper. His tools, as for his, are fifty or sixty kinds of painting tools that he has made himself. In terms of drawing methods, methods and philosophical thinking, he also distanced himself from traditional ink painters. Why am I so happy to recommend him to Chinese and foreign institutions and collectors? Because the spirit contained in his works is only found in the East. In the words of the art critic Gao Minglu, he expressed a kind of "urban Zen", minimalist, and the schema and artistic conception appeared ethereal, illusory and powerful, and beautiful to the extreme. And the vast majority of ink artists or "art cannons", in the face of cruel life and reality, or distorted, or greasy, can not see much art of the pure heart. Lao He, as always, firmly followed his own path. Whether it is his "Judgment on Emptiness" series or the "Light Poems" series, it contains a kind of life inquiry, about human dignity, about the value of art.
Lao He's "Light Poems" 70, 160cmX240cm
Ding Xilin: When Wuhan is in the most difficult period of fighting the new crown epidemic, as a member of the residents, how does Lao He's anxiety and waiting in the special environment in 2020 have with the original artistic goals?
Wu Guoquan: In 2020, an external force struck so suddenly, and I experienced some things in order to set an example for my family, and I was quieter than ever. During those days, I thought a lot, more thoroughly, more three-dimensionally, more comprehensively reflecting or reviewing my own artistic path in the previous decades. After Wuhan was unsealed, I flew to the studio immediately. I soaked in the studio all day and all day, drawing a lot of paintings like crazy, and the "Light Poems" series and the "Judgment on the Void" series were all hatched cubs during this period. My ideal is to make the work pure to the point where it sounds in the air, so pure that you walk only with your soul in the same frequency in the vast universe.
Ding Xilin: Lao He, you said that you did a lot of "stupid things" in the past, for example, a long time ago, all the works of artists that can be found in ancient and modern China and abroad were collected, and hundreds of thousands of pictures were accumulated by downloading pictures alone. How did you sort out the massive number of pictures that year? What are the main takeaways?
Wu Guoquan: The reason I collected information so clumsily is that my foreign language is too bad. Earlier I talked about being afraid to go abroad, which is a "dirt bun". And by collecting information, I can see a lot of things that we don't usually see. In fact, this solved the problem that I did not dare to go abroad, and it also solved the problem of my vision and heart. I go through the materials, and I also study the materials, looking for enlightenment, inspiration, and revelation points from them, and digesting these pictures and materials from the perspective of a person who works as a work of art, and finding out their internal connections. For example, the process of how to turn a point into a line, a line into a face, and finally a face into a body. Later, I seemed to have learned the trick, and the process was that the more I got later, the more I felt that the idols I used to worship seemed to gradually fall behind me.
"I have a motif that I need to take care of all my life"
Ding Xilin: Many of Lao He's new works are named "Light Poems". For the visual capture and artistic expression of "light", why is it said by Lao He that it is "a motif that needs to be cared for with a lifetime"? What is the pleasure of thought?
Wu Guoquan: Let me first talk about light. Physics speaks of light, religion speaks of light, and secular life speaks of light. For me, the emergence of the 2020 "Light Poems" series of works can also be described as a light of life. You think, the whole world, everyone is shrouded by the unprecedented epidemic, people's most basic desire to survive and all kinds of fears are mixed together, what is the "light" at that moment? It's hope. I want to be saved, and I want to live better. The Light is sanctified by us. I'll talk about poetry again. The poets whom people envy are often free- and rarely bound by the world, and their verses overflow with life and the tentacles of life are almost a sublime holy relic of mankind. In difficult times and difficult circumstances, we all want to poetry our lives, and we also want to poetry our lives. I create the Light Poems series, which expresses examination or reflection. I vaguely feel that the ideal is nothing more than a poetic trace.
Jia Tingfeng: Regarding Lao Hei's "Light Poem", I personally think there are several key words. One is speed, one is passion, and one is control. If you look at his series, the paintings are full of tension, which seem to be the product of passion in an instant explosion. In fact, his thought magma will be accumulated for a long time, as if he was pregnant in October and gave birth, and finally fell on the paper in a short time. This moment carries his various explorations of art for more than 40 years. And then his light. His light sometimes comes from "necessity" and sometimes from "chance." The light generated by the fusion of nature is sometimes similar to the blank space of traditional calligraphy and painting, which is very interesting. The theme of "light" integrated into Chinese ink paintings can be described as a new topic, and there has been no concept of light or creative theme in Chinese literati paintings for thousands of years, which is worth exploring in depth!
Lao He's "Light Poems" no. 171, 199× 157.5cm
Ding Xilin: Looking at Lao He's ink painting art in recent years, it is reminiscent of Richter in Germany and the minimalist painting genre in the West.
Jia Tingfeng: I personally think that Lao He's ink painting is very different from richter in Germany. First of all, Richter uses industrial acrylic pigments, and his era background and life experience determine that his ideological landing point is completely different from Lao He, who uses Chinese ink. In addition, Lao He thought was deeply influenced by Chinese Zen Buddhism and reflected deeply. Their expression is also different, Lao He is to make painting tools by himself, and take them on the cardboard to "move". The cardboard itself is relatively smooth, and the ink painting on it is quite technically difficult, not to mention the freedom to express the schema of the heart's desire. It takes a thousand hammers and tribulations. In recent years, Lao He has used up a few tons of paper, and also used a lot of ink, during which he has done a lot of experiments to achieve today's peculiar art style that belongs to his original art.
Wu Guoquan: I would like to say that any ancient civilization or ancient culture is the cornerstone for later mankind to create a new civilization and culture. For me, Richter is one of the cornerstones of my re-creation of works of art, but the cornerstone is far more than just him. The vast universe is presented in a minimalist way, and this minimalism is based on an extremely complex "existence".
Ding Xilin: I am curious about Lao He's huge work "Zhang Ailing's Curtain". Writer Zhang Ailing went from the magic capital of Shanghai to the world Chinese stage. When Lao He created "Zhang Ailing's Curtain", what things were triggered?
Wu Guoquan: I just borrowed Zhang Ailing to make a medicine primer. In fact, I want to show how a three-dimensional person faces a complex surrounding. It is also about the upbringing education we have received before. Real people seem too far away to me. They were either plucked high or trampled short. And from Zhang Ailing's life and her works, I can feel her personality and her vivid color, and I also smell the boundless loneliness of her old age, and even "see" an old woman who can't live forever in a foreign country, relying on her own powerless curtains, allowing the breeze or gently blowing, or wildly tyrannical! I imagined the sigh of an old woman facing the withering leaves.
"The Judgment on Emptiness" is to the point and fits his artistic ideas
Ding Xilin: From the perspective of painting language, Lao He's painting has a very clear recognition. It is recognizable at a glance in the ocean of works at the International Art Fair. When did such a style take shape, and how did it deepen its evolution?
Wu Guoquan: From the time node, it is the year that Lao Jia and his wife, Liu Guangxia, and Huang Chengzhong came to my house to see the paintings. Their group appearance at the crossroads of my path forward was crucial and profound in my later artistic direction.
By saying this, it does not mean that they taught me to draw, but that they found "strange art" in my small pieces of paper. Growing and evolving from that chick, I went from the "Heavenly Stone" series and the "Light Poems" series to today's "Judgment on the Sky" series. In the meantime, there were two things that also had a particularly big impact on me, one was film and the other was black and white photography. There is also a key point, which is the transformation of tools and the transformation of materials. From the perspective of utensils, the traditional "three major pieces" of Chinese ink painting are brushes, rice paper, and ink. From a metaphysical point of view, Lao Zhuang has a profound influence on me regarding creative ideas. His words, "The five colors are blinding, the five tones are deaf, the five flavors are refreshing, and the galloping and hunting is maddening..." This is almost a enlightenment of me.
Lao He's "Judgment on The Void", No. 37, 159.5×212cm
Ding Xilin: Lao He's contemporary ink paintings seem to have both speed, strength, structure, fun, space, and so on. Please ask Lao Jia, how do you define Lao He's art? In this new exhibition, what are the "principles" and "scales" to select works?
Jia Tingfeng: On March 19, I asked art critic Dr. Xia Kejun to be the curator and scholar Wang Duanting to be the academic host, and held an exhibition of Lao Hexin's works in Taihe Art Space with the theme of "Trial of Emptiness". Chinese philosophy is full of the concept of the unity of heaven and earth such as void and emptiness, and the depths of Chinese's thoughts are also full of mixed and matched ideas of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and so on. In essence, "emptiness" is so extravagant and distant for modern people in a materialistic society. At the same time, we must also be fully vigilant or vigilant about "emptiness", who can be empty in this world? And who can do it? Art emphasizes the liberation of individuality, and it is easy to mislead many people by the common big and empty, mysterious and empty. Based on this consideration, I think that "Trial of Emptiness" is to the point, and it is also very much in line with Lao He's consistent artistic thought. As for the speed, power, structure, fun, space, etc. contained in the picture, they all serve the idea of the work.
Ding Xilin: Oil painting is a universal schema language. Ink painting is still relatively regional. How do you see the possibility of contemporary ink painting going global? How can contemporary ink painting in China be on an equal footing with Western contemporary art?
Wu Guoquan: Oil painting is the language of the world in visual art. It was used early on to preach religion. When you look at oil painting today, it actually changes greatly from the appearance and efficacy of early oil painting. As far as the West is concerned, the development of oil painting in different countries is not the same. Why? Because of the exploration and interpretation of different nationalizations, it is infiltrated with the customs, customs, and so on of the people. And I am still optimistic about the development prospects of similar ink art. Just like Chinese was not listed as a working language at the United Nations before, it has now become another major international language after several major languages. This evolution depends on comprehensive strength and cultural influence. If you don't have outstanding works, how can people learn ink with us and play these things together? I am not a nationalist. However, I think the art of ink fun should have its place in the world. The internationalization of ink art requires many factors to promote it. In particular, my ideal ink art is actually an ink concept, rather than simply sticking to and reusing brushes and ink to draw on rice paper. The concept of ink painting needs further enlightenment, inspiration and enlightenment.
Jia Tingfeng: For more than 30 years, I have watched international art exhibitions such as Kassel, the Armoury, Venice, and Basel, and I have also had in-depth exchanges with European and American counterparts around contemporary ink painting. According to what I have seen in my painstaking exploration, there is no problem in the domestic art world to pick out a few contemporary ink painters to display on the international stage. Some of the works of the top artists will not be weakened when they are listed in any museum or art gallery in the world and have an equal dialogue with other masters, and we have cultural self-confidence in this regard. The "short board" lies in the fact that it is inseparable from the promotion of multiple forces. Master artists need the active intervention of academic research departments, administrative departments, including museums, critics, media, finance, collecting and other forces, rather than relying on artists and art institutions alone to achieve this. China's contemporary ink painting, its breakthrough bottleneck development needs to rely on various forces of the state and society, arouse the public's awareness of new art, improve the public's aesthetic standards, so that the introduction of Chinese contemporary ink to the world is just around the corner.
Author: Ding Xilin
Editor: Shi Wei
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.