(This article is reproduced from The Collector's Auction Magazine)
At the first sight of Zhang Mingming's works, I was moved by the surprising sensuality and frankness. Shadows, leaves, light... These forgotten everyday objects, "savage growth" on rice paper, are full of randomness and have traces similar to photography.
The interview with Zhang Mingming, made many appointments, just like his creation, but also have to pay attention to the time and place, "I want to go up to the mountain to paint on sunny days, and it is estimated that I have to be idle after night on rainy days." It sounds like Zhang Mingming's artistic creation is more like performance art, wandering around, quietly observing the changes of trees and flowers, and sensing the relationship between nature and paper and ink... He interprets each piece with his most intuitive feelings.
Zhang Mingming said: "I rely on this way of life, here is my freedom, the freedom to paint. ”
· "Jade Dragon Mountain Trip" photography 2021
01
Make nature a teacher
Leave the most beautiful moments of all things on rice paper
"Today is June 28, 2021, tomorrow I am going to leave the city of Beijing again to complete my creations, running to the mountains and seas is the only way to keep my love for the world, summer will always give me a lot of hope, everything is growing, in the next 100 days, I will resonate with the same frequency with nature, leaving their most beautiful moments on my rice paper." 」 Before the interview, I watched a video of Zhang Mingming leaving Beijing.
It can be seen that most of the works were completed by him in the mountains. Or rather, he was an artist who lived on nature.
· Zhang Mingming is accustomed to resonating with nature at the same frequency
"The mountains and rivers are far away, not to mention the dynasty. Growing up in the mountains, my life was like grass, small but strong. I learned from flowers and plants and took nature as a teacher. Yearn for the possibility of growing freely like them.
Every time you walk in the mountains, you see the rhythm of the changing seasons, and when you see a leaf withering, it is illuminated by the shining golden light in the sky, and the light on each leaf is different. When I returned to my home at the end of my day's work, sat in the mountains after dinner and took a cold bath, I found that the night was so quiet, and the sounds of frogs and insects sounded like a beautiful symphony in the summer wind. Heaven and earth have great beauty without words, and this experience is the most precious thing in my artistic creation. ”
· Wild, 180x97cm Rice paper ink color, 2020
· Purple Gas, 138x69cm Rice Paper Ink Color, 2019
Zhang Xuan has a cloud: "The creation of foreign teachers, the source of the heart." ”
The ancients began to create after obtaining a real experience of themselves in the real landscape, and the painting itself is a kind of summary of nature. Most contemporary painters are impetuous, and few can dig deep into the ancient Zen realm of Jin and Tang art, a few can get the shape, but those who can get their gods are one in the world. Zhang Mingming is one of the very few painters who can obtain the spirit of landscape and water.
Born in Chongqing, living in Beijing, accustomed to growing up in the cracks of big cities, but fond of grass and trees and mountains, humanistic, natural, the collision of the two is more real and rare, shadow, falling leaves, daylight, night, natural sounds, these most common words, in his pen more vivid.
At this moment, Zhang Mingming is walking through the Yulong Mountain in Chongqing holding rice paper, looking for a place that resonates with nature. Sometimes the work needs to be completed quickly under strong light, sometimes it needs to stay overnight, how to enter the creation, how to give the work to nature, how to grasp the timing and method of re-creation, these are like the laws of living with nature.
· Zhang Mingming's artistic creation breathes with nature
02
Thoughtful experimental ink painting
A set of your own creative programs
In fact, from the earliest time to enter the studio to the present, Zhang Mingming has never done anything else that has nothing to do with art. In his original words: "I just want to paint." ”
Since graduating from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2011, Zhang Mingming has been doing experimental paintings with ink, but he actually began to study environmental art design, and then transferred to the oil painting department.
"I studied oil painting during college. Because ink is a sensual material that attracts me, I want to try it out. Rain, sunlight, air, temperature, ink rhyme, rice paper. These natural things blended together to become my work, and I surprised myself! Is this what they call the unity of heaven and man, and the way of doing it is natural? Does it matter? Zhang Mingming likes the combination of virtual and real characteristics of ink painting, "Every thing is alive, life is inseparable from water, and ink is a very sensitive material, only this sensitive material can record the material life experience and life process." ”
· Springlight 138x35xcmx4 Rice Paper Ink Color 2020
· Leaf, 138cm× 69cm Rice Paper Ink Color, 2020
Zhang Mingming has his own set of creative procedures, most of which are in a state of outdoor action sketching.
The different concentrations of ink are randomly spread on rice paper, allowing it to "grow wildly" under some natural forces such as sunlight, temperature, and wind, and ink, rice paper, and everything are fused together, and they are speaking, and they can speak, which has become Zhang Mingming's painting.
Different from traditional creation, Zhang Mingming abandons the "pen" of traditional ink painting and chooses a multi-media approach to seek a visual transformation, such as rubbing, in the tangible and intangible, virtual and real, and light and shadow fragmented structures, unique ink elements seem to be orderly combined with the forces of nature into an abstract, semi-abstract picture.
With nature as the imprint of life and ink as the trace of nature, Zhang Mingming's works are no longer delicately depicting the landscape itself, but using pen and ink to express his own flesh and blood and body and mind on rice paper. Through the branches and leaves, we can see a Zhang Mingming who projects the energy of the whole body onto the picture.
· Grass Is Not Autumn, 60x60cm Rice Paper Ink Color, 2020
03
Follow within
To yearn for nature is to yearn for freedom
Zhang Mingming's iconic shadows and leaves combine traditional brushwork and modern innovations, reflecting everything in nature, and also embodying the painter's strong interest in photography and video. Under the seemingly contemporary concepts and schema representations, the spiritual core of traditional Oriental culture still runs through.
"Some people say, 'The paradise of Chinese has mountains and water, and the paradise of Westerners is the garden.'" In the Book of Peach Blossom Origin, Tao Yuanming fictionalized a landscape pastoral world outside of time, which is a paradise for Chinese and a Chinese landscape view, and landscape and pastoral are the most able to cause Chinese sense of belonging. In the art of Chinese painting, landscape painting has a history of thousands of years. Confucius's 'Shanshui Bede' gave shanshui a humanized moral beauty and completed the natural return of man. 'Leshan for the Benevolent, Happy Water for the Wise' naturally integrates art and morality. The spirit of the landscape is the spirit of nature. ”
Zhang Mingming is obsessed with the reality he observes, follows the inner world, does not imitate a specific master or ancient person, does not stick to traditional stereotypes and dogmas, everything is a calm and careful imitation, and everything is a natural outpouring of the heart.
· Canghai, 180x97cm rice paper ink color, 2020
· Lianzhi, 138x69cm Rice Paper Ink, 138x69cm, 2021
Clear to the heart, to see the spirit. We thought Zhang Mingming had created a miracle, but on the contrary, he said, "It was art that saved me." ”
"Because of my creation, I have the opportunity to find these landscapes here that I have not appreciated in my daily life. The mountains and rivers are exotic, and the wind and moon are the same day. Hopefully you'll get a chance to feel it all too. I'm very dependent on this way of life, here is my freedom, the freedom to paint. ”
· Infinity, 450x620cm rice paper ink color, 2019
The Countryside, 138x69cm rice paper ink color, 2019
· Zongheng, 138x138cm Rice Paper Ink Color, 2019
Zhang Mingming is a serious artist, just as he has been preparing for this interview for several days. So whenever we look at his works, we can always feel a sense of authenticity, very natural, very ethereal, very charming.
"As a creator, I can see these beautiful pictures, and I want to thank God for drawing by the power of nature, wind blowing, sun, rain. Things leave their shadows on my canvas, people are not as natural as nature, I love them, and I love my experience of free traveling through the mountains. Every creative process is rich and colorful, swimming in the heavens and the earth feels more fulfilling, yearning for nature is yearning for freedom. ”
· Zhang Mingming's outdoor action sketches, shuttling throughout the mountains.
When the sky was clear, Zhang Mingming carried his rice paper into the mountain again, looking for the fallen leaves and the wisps of light that moved him.
Photography 2018
【Artist Profile】
Zhang Mingming, a native of Yongchuan, Chongqing, graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and now lives in Beijing.
Solo exhibitions
2016 "Chongqing Forest" Shanghai Himalayan Center Humanistic Space
Partial group exhibitions
2021 Qing Chun National Young Artist Nomination Exhibition Yunnan Literature and Art Museum
In 2021, he was awarded the art communication agency Chengdu
2021 Star Project Tree Art Museum, Beijing
2020 Ink Xiangqian Taiwan Art Education Museum Taiwan
2020 Spring return to the land Baolong Art Center Shanghai
2019 Hallucinatory Memory - Four-Person Exhibition Nova Art Museum Nanjing
2019 Go Shade - Group Exhibition of Young Artists Taihe Art Space Beijing
2018 Letter from the East - INTER-YOUTH - International Youth Painting Exhibition, Art Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
2016 "Landscape Society - Mapping the Future" Himalayan Art Museum Shanghai