IN A FANTASTIC TODAY AND A MYSTICAL PAST
Wang Mai

I have always had an attitude of respect towards religion and it is because of this respect that I have a deep suspicion of its historical and present situation. There exists a difficult to suppress ridiculousness between the history of the once existent “saints” and the current history we are experiencing. Religion is supposed to represent humanity’s compassion, but to this day, it still continues to inflict heavy casualties on humankind. The lament on the state of the world set forth in the original teachings of the great religions are worthy of esteem. The vicissitudes and prosperity of religion is something that everyone ought to experience.

If a work is placed in different contexts, then it may appear fragmentary and unexpected. Everything, from materials, to the way of thinking, and the works meaning is understood and developed, as well as misread and distorted by the audience. This truly is one of the main values of creating an artwork. Therefore, whenever I communicate with viewers, whether he/she is in the field of art or just an art hobbyist, I seemingly understand their feelings towards my work. These feelings have become their own artworks, and they themselves are its master.

Poetry has produced a deep influence on the innermost levels of my work. This source sometimes seems without reason even mysterious. Yet, it has already sunken into the midst of my subconscious. The poetic nature and poetic sentiment in my work is already not the so called visual poetry of the work’s appearance, even less the traditional poetic idyllic meaning. The poetry of the works appearance is perhaps but a type of anti-logical atmosphere in which the light of the language is refracted into artistic skill. Due to my mother’s influence, I could already recite a few Tang poems even before I could attend elementary school. Perhaps this does not necessarily explain anything; however, this short experience appears to have constituted a feeling towards poetry that seems to have come from above. The power and mystery of those words astonished me. Reading poetry thus became a part of my life. As a result, I have never attempted to resist the textual nature in my artwork. On the contrary, it is exactly this type of holistic training imbedded in the transmission of Chinese culture and customs from generation to generation that enables Chinese art to be completely unique.

Furthermore, in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, the artist’s work will gain the most influential power possible of a work in the comments, utterances, and annotations of people from the same period, or collectors of successive generations. It is an interaction that crosses both time and space. The life of the work is endowed with an extremely readable nature by the writing of time. This practice holds an extensive realm of human knowledge that is unique to Chinese civilization. In my adolescence, I began to delve into classical calligraphy, and even started to write poetry. This was a critical step in my artistic grounding and cultural preparation. In the process of continuously practicing and writing calligraphy, I began to acquire a feeling for the visual significance produced by Chinese characters; their structures stately and dignified like buildings, their scope vast and wide like mountains and valleys, their elegance delicate and subtle, and their variegated shapes nightmarish as the history of the culture behind it.

However, after I began painting I abandoned these traditional cultural practices, completely separating from it for a long period. But a few years ago, when I was once again examining and studying this traditional culture, a renewed excitement came over me. Traditional calligraphy and painting provided me a perfect spiritual temperament for understanding the visual. Moreover, the mystery of poetry opened a new line of thinking. Today, revisiting the seemingly strange saying of “cultivating art” has already become visibly important. It is as if the contemporary artistic creative community constructed a base with the characteristics of contemporary Chinese art. China is a country with a deep cultural tradition. Those fellows who faked their way into contemporary art circles without any of this training cannot always be “wanting artistic talent but lacking it, wanting ideas but lacking them, wanting character but lacking it.” Some have made it in with only a stomach full of wishful thinking that is without knowledge and without shame.

The dramatic changes in contemporary life have brought doubts and even an impetus to critique and reevaluate history. Regarding the connection or separation of today and the past, or of history’s falsehood, I still hold that you must reevaluate and even express your own desires. This idea is also what constitutes the basic framework of all my works. If history inherently both has and lacks a concept of time, then the spirit running through my works is an extensive praxis that crosses cultural viewpoints and political concerns and creates an inseparable entirety between them.

Being a witness to the “history of today,” I have seen the vicissitudes encountered by our generation in its quest for freedom; it is something of great meaning. The intermixtures, gaudiness, and tragedy brought about by the racial, cultural, political and economic inequality beside oneself and in the entire world, stir one’s soul.

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