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Putting a modern twist on ancient art form
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CHINESE calligraphy is not just an old art with rigid ancient rules. It can be modern and reflect an avant-garde spirit in multiple art forms.
Its contemporary image is now on display in a Hangzhou gallery exhibiting the works of 80 artists from home and abroad.
The China Academy of Art exhibit is called “Writing and Non-writing,” and paper isn’t the only medium. Magnetic powder, dolls and glass also feature. Characters are not necessarily written, but can be printed; even in some works absent altogether.
“The works can be called calligraphy, or not,” says Wang Dongling, head curator. “But this exhibition is not to show how far this art form can go. Instead, it’s to show the spirit of it.”
The history of Chinese calligraphy can be traced back to 400 BC. It is generally distinguished from other art forms by its emphasis on motion and its reflection of dynamic daily life.
The exhibition includes more than 60 Chinese and 20 foreign artists.
“Twisted Bodies” by Xi Xiuxia turns a dozen human-size dolls into one sculpture. While their faces are not seen, their limbs and trunks are so entangled that it takes time to tell which arm belongs to which body.
“I was inspired by ancient calligrapher Zhang Xu’s cursive style, where the strokes spin when written,” explains Xi, adding that she collected the clothes of the dolls from older people and children to “show relationships and generation gaps.”
An interactive piece by Su A’xiang is a rectangular glass box containing magnetic powder. When a cone-shaped piece of iron is moved above the powder, the particles move and combine into streams, leaving artistic trails that can linger for seconds. It looks as if the iron is the brush and the magnets are the ink.
Even the works on paper are unusual.
“Ban Zheng,” for example, is a piece of paperwork with the characters ban zheng written on it. The words mean “making a document.” Above the two characters is a cell-phone number.
It is an reflection of the real work. In any Chinese cities, stickers with ban zheng can be found on walls, bus stop boards, and telegraph poles, offering people fake official documents.
US-based Chinese artist Xu Bing also contributes a work. He is best known for his “Book from the Sky,” in which all characters look like Chinese but are meaningless because he wrote Chinese into one-block words made up of pinyin.
For example, his name is written with an “X” above and a squared “U” below. The work is his “rewriting” of a classical Chinese verse by ancient female poet Li Qingzhao.
Among so-called “non-written” pieces are a photo of a continuous tiled roof designed by 2013 Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu; a tinted glass piece with calligraphy printed by celebrated chromatist Song Jianming; and a video that recorded how Swiss artist Lis Jung Lu used water to write calligraphy on a rocky slope.
This exhibition is held every five years at the academy. This is the third.
Curator Wang’s work “Peripateticism” is showcased as well. It is in his signature style — “chaotic calligraphy” that has characters crisscrossed, overlapped and, therefore, unrecognizable. However, “the rhythm can be detected, which I think is the focus of cursive style calligraphy,” he says.
A parallel solo exhibition by Wang is being held at the nearby Sanshang Art Museum. It shows his “chaotic calligraphy,” “body calligraphy” that writes characters on artistic nude photos, and “film calligraphy” that brushes photographic dyes on photo films and then develops it.
Date: Today is the last day for the main exhibition; Wang’s solo exhibition runs to June 1
Venue: Gallery of China Academy of Art at 218 Nanshan Rd; Sanshang Art Museum at 52-2 Yan’an Rd S.
Admission: Free
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