On the artist Suling Wang’s official website, she is introduced thus: “Suling Wang is a contemporary artist, who is known for her predominantly large abstract paintings, which explore the artist’s sense of location and distance between Eastern and Western cultures. Through a strong awareness of the principles of Chinese landscape painting and the methods and ideas of European and American abstraction, Wang has developed a personal visual language.”[i]
Upon first encountering the paintings of Suling Wang, there is an immediate sense of being awestruck by the explosive panoramic imagery in her work, which embodies the ancient Tang Dynesty poetic phrase “winds sweep through the tower before imminent mountain rain.” Despite being abstract, her work nonetheless conjures multiple layers of concrete imagination, of scenes with the immediacy of a misty aftermath from a clash of heroes straight out of Jin Yong’s wuxia epics, converging on the summit of Mount Hua, at the moment of the Big Bang that gave birth to the Universe; or a fervent symphony visualized, the intricate brush strokes and the multitude of intersecting symbols and lines are a symphonic performance of disparate instruments in concert. For the most part, these are not scenes of tranquil comfort, but of bustling cacophony, or of thunderous resound.[ii] On further inspection, her paintings impart to the viewer the intuitive sense of Chinese shanshui paintings, but her expression is liberated and carefree, unencumbered by the fetters of representation.
Of the East and of the West: a temporal-spatial amalgam
The absolute binary of East and West is apocryphal. Cultures are constantly undergoing interfusion, combining and integrating in varying degrees through the conduits of space and time, at different depths and breadths, agitating and interweaving at divergent points in time, geography, ways of life, or technology and then giving rise to new cultures. The historical binary opposition of the East and the West continues in mutual agitation; and one of the ways in which cultures coalesce is through the progression of those who living in alien places.[iii]
Having made London her home for the past two decades, Suling Wang was born and raised in rural Taiwan. In her large-scale paintings that combine Eastern and Western cultures, she maneuvers a rich sensibility to express a new visualization, embarking on another chapter in contemporary painting. In her work, the “East” and “West” coexist in a dialogical relationship, integrated and mutually created in juxtaposition in her creative process. Through painting, she arrives at a certain self-reconciliation for internal conflicts stemming from a deep longing for her homeland and family after years of living in London. Through expression and representation on canvas – finding equilibrium between tension and ease, between the linear and the planar, the abstract and the figurative, between movement and stillness – all of the elements are simultaneously subject and object, in parallel progression and in mutual support.
In his 2011 essay describing Suling Wang’s painting process, artist Daniel Pulman mentions her inspiration drawn from the traditional Chinese shanshui paintings, and notes the ways in which her work is related to the Buddhist and Taoist sages of China, such as Shi Tao, Wang Wei, Lao Tzu — taking nourishment from her forebearers and transforming this into her own creativity.[iv] Regardless of any conclusions drawn from the ripples of debate regarding the true meaning of Shi Tao’s statement: “the brush follows the era,” the author positively affirms contemporary artists who seek the teaching of the ancients in exploring the “spirituality” of the relationship between humans and nature – rather than a blind pursuit of pretentious trends. Though immersed in a Western environment of learning and practice, Suling Wang’s élan vital for her life and creativity is found in the pillars of family, homeland, and the traditional culture of Chinese philosophers with their emphasis on nature and spiritualty.
The temporal concepts of Chinese classical painting originate in the reciprocal and complementary concepts of “motion” in Confucianism and Taoism. The temporal consciousness in Suling Wang’s paintings is compatible with the temporal concepts of the Chinese classical painting aesthetic, as well as relevant to ideas such as vivid artistic conception, of the eternal yi and change. The overall dynamism and movement presented by the structure of her paintings is of utmost importance to her painting expression, and “motion” is at the root of the Chinese temporal perspective. Her paintings are always able to present a “integrated temporal-spatial realm” through the overall presentation of the correspondence of the tangible and the void in structure, color, and brushstroke.[v] Her visual construction integrates the strong contrasting color choices of traditional Eastern folk culture to directly impart a vigorous carefree sense in the viewer, and this is always able to arouse the curiosity in viewers, enticing them to linger. The viewers’ time is another time. The viewer always seeks something from the painting — this type of painting has the “momentum” to spark the viewers’ imagination. For the time being, let us call this power to give the viewer pause “painting power.” Perhaps exceptional works of art can always entice the viewer to pause. So, what is it that sets Suling Wang’s paintings apart? Her paintings are unique in the existence of an indescribable inward quietude and solemnity that lies beyond/behind the fierce, cacophonous, and thoroughly saturated imagery. The tension between the two aspects is what prompts the viewer to pause.
There is a painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich, whose quietness gives the viewer pause and draws the viewer in. At the center of the painting, a lone figure stands with his back toward the viewers outside the frame as he faces the sea in contemplation. This is a painting that metamorphizes a plethora of events and objects that cannot be expressed or represented within temporal-spatial limitations, whose connotations are beyond words (the frame) can convey. This artistic concept can be extended to the sense imparted by Suling Wang’s paintings: regardless of intensity or boisterousness, viewers will always find moments of calm within the details, and connotations always transcend the frame, extending the temporal continuity. Returning to painting, Suling Wang’s paintings are also reminiscent of another work, the dramatic works of 17th century artist Nicolas Poussin such as the 1650 work The Assumption of the Virgin. If we set aside the figurative content (such as human faces), the folds and wrinkles in the clothing of the figures become momentarily abstracted, producing dramatic tension in the momentum. The contrasting expressions of Friedrich’s classical quietude and Poussin’s Baroque extravagance, simultaneously coexist in a painting by Suling Wang.
The textures and brushwork in Suling Wang’s paintings are also a fusion of the Chinese and Western techniques, embodying a unique individual emotion, style, and aesthetic appeal. In the Chinese painting vocabulary, this seems to be constructed through “brushstroke” or, taking it a step further, a contemporary “wrinkling technique” or texturizing. Brushstroke and texture are of utmost importance to individual artists in shaping the unique capitivating quality of a painting, and is an irreplaceable personal imprint. This is not unlike the unique “script writing” styles cultivated by calligraphers.
Abstract vs. Figurative: neither abstract nor figurative
If the fusion of Eastern and Western painting composition techniques and imagery is an important aspect of Suling Wang’s paintings, then flowing between the abstract and the figurative is another. The formation and mature development of “abstraction” in painting is a key development of modern painting in the 20th century, and Suling Wang’s work is often categorized as abstract painting. In terms of re-presentation, her creativity is definitively not in the depiction or reproduction of concrete objects or events; however her paintings always disrupt imagery of nature that are stored in the depths of the viewer’s memory. Many paintings depict actual “likenesses” of landscapes viewed from above, and at times, reveal a figurative vocabulary. Suling Wang has said that her paintings are “neither abstract nor figurative” because abstraction and actuality are not the focal point of her paintings.
Another link to the Chinese painting traditions is the inherent aerial multi-viewpoint present in Suling Wang’s paintings that guides the viewer in a panoramic birdseye view, as exemplified in the 2005 works Liwu River Loops and River Loops (Shakadang). Albeit abstract, there are often a specific number of “complex spaces” within the overall composition that have been meticulously gathered together to express an infinite continuity, a flowing freedom, temporal-spatial sense, and depth. Whereas the development of Western modernist abstract painting can be regarded from certain perspectives as a process of compressing the pictorial plane in painting – the concept and practice of single point perspective once pervasive throughout Western art history is no longer seen in abstract painting, Suling Wang’s abstract paintings attempt to amalgamate Chinese painting traditions with Western abstract painting, developing and presenting a contemporary painting that is neither abstract nor figurative and which implies a structure of an aerial multi-viewpoint. At the same time, the compressed plane of the painting is reversed and reconstructed to create varying depths in the painting. The structures and imagery of Chinese calligraphy are inherent in the complex lines of her paintings, in some instances they invoke the lines of calligraphic characters (for instance in the 2004 work Lanyu). These expressions are perhaps the result of her period of calligraphic practice[vi], while the structure of lines resembling Chinese characters also sets her work apart from Western abstractionism. In short, mountains and waters have always been present in Suling Wang’s paintings. But how might we attempt to clarify the core connotations consistently present throughout her artistic sojourn which began in the early 1990s? The author posits that this lies in the exquisite expressiveness always present in her work, which resists an affinity for figurative realism and awaits a self-completing dynamic of “becoming” on the part of the viewer. In addition to bringing together Eastern and Western cultures, her “shanshui” landscape paintings are perceptual, and not of the methods of visualization seen in Western landscape paintings. These expressions that present a perceptual system that diverges from Western paintings are related to the culture of the artist’s upbringing.
A Singing River of Converging Multiplicities
Suling Wang’s travels between London and Taichung has become frequent in recent years. The series The Singing River represents her profound concern and response for her homeland.[vii] Semantically, rivers are often a metaphor for time – the river of life; rivers also function as a source of nutrition and nourishment, and human civilizations often develop and strengthen along the shores of waterways. Growing up in rural Taiwan, Suling Wang lived near the Dajia River. The singing “river” refers to Taiwan’s Dajia River near the artist’s family home, and the river of time, as well as the invisible currents formed by the convergence of space and time between Taiwan and England. According to Suling Wang, The Singing River is a reflection on the land of Taiwan.
Her paintings may be said to be a complexity that allows the simultaneous existence of many moments in the past. As described above, beyond representing an overall space, a number of overlapping “complex spaces” also exist within each painting. Additionally, the paintings, including the recently developed Singing River series, often contain a set of obvious symbols – inspired by the lines and creases in the collars and sashes of traditional portraits of Chinese ladies of the court, or the mysterious symbols akin to calligraphic lines – these at times like tiny flying machines, or boxes of secrets belonging to a reticent artist, that awaits elucidation. The tacit body lies beneath the flowing sashes and collars of the traditional ladies of the court, but we cannot know the accurate connotations that lie beneath the mysterious painting vocabulary though they are deeply compelling. These symbols are sometimes revealed and sometimes concealed; unique in design without repetition, embodying a contemporary and subtle technological aesthetic consciousness,[viii] they are another layer of flowing “complex space” that extend from traditional Chinese lines. As the artist mentions in an artist statement in 2011, “In my work, there is a central idea which is to take apart my personal world and then reassembling it, transforming it into blocks. These elemental pieces reflect a certain concept. And these concepts present a multitude of changes according to varying temporal and spatial conditions; these changes present an interweaving of certainty and uncertainty. This is followed by dissembling, division, and then a further integration. The artistic vocabulary I present is an amalgamation of stratification and overlay and is guided by the visual sense to display a dynamic abstract realm which encompasses the spatial-temporal exchange and a dialog with life.”
Due to the passage of time in painting, paintings are always saturated by the artist’s concerns and realizations regarding life experiences, objects, and events at various times, hence the painting encompasses a complex and multiplicity of time. As media, acrylics and oils characteristically allow for accumulation. In practice, the accumulation of continual wiping away and addition of pigments creates another space in painting through the formation of “temporal distance”. Let us momentarily refer to this as a “vertical complex space.” And the large quantities of “horizontal” space assembled from vertical overlayered complex space and the various lines and symbols on the canvas will gradually merge into a complete spatial temporal body from a state of fragmentation.
In Summary: a contemporary convergence of the past and future
In Suling Wang’s large-scale paintings that combine Eastern and Western cultures, she maneuvers a rich sensibility to express a new imagery, embarking on another chapter in contemporary painting. Her paintings are an intricate complexity of internal and external temporal journeys, both a complete body as well as a scattered “complex temporality.” Each detail in the painting is an imprint of unique life chapters, a convergence of the East and the West, a collusion of the abstract and the figurative, as well as a superposition of the past and the present and a coexistence of complex time. To returning to the original intent of painting, for the artist her paintings are “a process of rebuilding the fractured self in the space of imagination.”[ix]
/
[i] https://www.sulingwang.tw/about
[ii] Daniel Pulman, “Letter to an Artist on the Edge of Home,” essay from the Suling Wang Catalog, published by Eslite Gallery , 2011.
[iii] The “East” in this essay differs in semantics to the “East” in discussions of Orientalism by Edward Said et. al, and from references to the “East” in Taiwan of the 1950s and -60s. The “East” here is relative to “Western” concepts of the “East” under the Buddhist and Taoist cultural traditions in China and Asia. In the context of this essay the terms “West” and “East” have a dialectical and corresponding connotation.
[iv] See endnote ii.
[v] Liu Yuedi, ‘Temporal Consciousness’ in Chinese Painting Aesthetics, 2009.
[vi] Interview with the artist.
[vii] Artist’s statement 2018.
[viii] These sets of obvious symbols include inspirations from the lines and creases of the collars and sashes depicted in traditional portraits of Chinese ladies of the court, or mysterious symbols akin to calligraphic lines. These at times like tiny flying machines and reminiscent of imagined shapes of flying saucers, or they may be representative of new symbolism that represent a technologized society such as the QR code, dialog boxes, alien life forms, or even online gaming. These are summarized in this essay as technological aesthetical consciousness.
[ix] See endnote ii.
