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WU MENGCHUN solo exhibition at Art Scene Beijing
8 - 20 June, 2007
Wu Mengchun’s paintings are influenced by his strong Buddhist beliefs. The artist has an introspective personality and draws a great deal of inspiration from Zen philosophy and poetry. His paintings follow his search for the ‘truth’ and he hopes that through them, others will be stimulated to find their own paths to enlightenment. Wu Mengchun wants his current series to encourage people to reflect on the elegance of traditional Chinese culture, which he feels is being abandoned to the detriment of society at large.
In the first part of his current series Wu Mengchun continues to use water as a symbol of life and purification. His work magnifies and abstracts the beauty of a single drop of water and its effect on a body of water – creating splashes, forming ripples and waves. Wu uses a non-traditional palette to explore water, with many brown hues, the colours possibly symbolizing mother earth herself.
Wu’s latest work also explores more traditional themes of Chinese culture, in particular the pine tree. The pine and plum tree, bamboo and orchid are known as ‘The Four Gentlemen’ in traditional Chinese culture. They often appear in Chinese ink painting as symbols of the national spirit, but are very rarely represented in Chinese contemporary oil painting. Interestingly, Wu uses a blue-based palette to represent the pine trees, possibly alluding to the fact that water is the key element of life on our planet. The artist employs different levels of abstraction and gives an almost tangled and chaotic impression of one of the “Gentlemen”.
Wu Mengchun is well-known for his past figurative paintings modeled after himself. In his previous series, he explored the cleansing and purification properties of water, while remaining loyal to his figurative work in a more abstract manner. This new series takes his examination of water and nature a step further by eliminating human figures from the picture altogether. Wu says that he has not deserted figurative work, but feels that this year is the year for change: “As China stands on the brink of being a formidable superpower, now is the time to define the example that China will bring to the rest of the world”. |
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