The Paper's reporter Xu Minghui
The hottest sun, the harshest moonlight, the bluest sky, the wildest wind, not elsewhere, just west of the Yellow River. Grasslands, deserts and mountains and rivers are vast and untouched, and these seemingly extremely monotonous western features carry the deity of countless pilgrims and inspire the artist's great creative enthusiasm.
On October 9th, "Journey to the West - Chen Hang Landscape Painting Exhibition" opened in the Gansu Provincial Museum, the exhibition exhibited nearly 100 Chinese paintings selected by the painter Chen Hang in the past 30 years, these works are expressed on the western mountains and rivers, humanities as the theme, he showed the majesty of the west to the audience in the expression of "Ink Painting Diary", and exhibited "Dayin Lanxin Line", "Ali Sheng trace", "Grand Bazaar", "Saga Old Traces", "Three Dangers and Silence", "Shazhou Diary , Hexi Village" and other fine masterpieces. At the opening ceremony, Chen Hang also donated the work "Dayin Lanxin Line" to the Gansu Provincial Museum.
Exhibition posters
The Grand Bazaar, 130cmx190cm, 2018
"Three Dangers and Silence" 300cmx190cm 2021
"Shazhou Diary Yang guan" 50cmx50cm, 2016
Chen Hang is currently a professor and doctor at the School of Fine Arts of Southwest University, a member of the Chinese Painting Art Committee of the China Artists Association, and a professor under Professor Zhang Zuan, specializing in Chinese painting and calligraphy. Over the years, he has insisted on sketching and creating in the western part of the motherland for decades, and the holding of this exhibition is a concentrated display of his creation, and it is also an enlightening reflection on the creation of landscapes in the western region.
The scene of the exhibition
The creation of western landscape painting is an important topic in the history of Chinese art since the twentieth century, and in the history of art in the past hundred years, almost all famous artists have formed an indissoluble relationship with the western region, Zhang Daqian, Xie Zhiliu, Li Xiongcai, Guan Shanyue, Zhao Wangyun, Shi Lu, He Haixia, and Chang Shuhong, who is known as the guardian of Dunhuang... All have left their artistic footprints in this magical land.
Chen Hang is also one of many art groups with hearts for the west and affection for the west. In the past 30 years, from the snowy plateau to the desert Gobi, from the highlands of western Sichuan to the Ganqing grassland, from the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains to the bottom of the Three Dangers Mountain, he has left Chen Hang's footprints. This kind of walking and collecting style in the west for a long time and a long span is also rare in today's Chinese art circles. In the past 30 years, Chen Hang has entered a deep tradition and transformed from it. He mentioned many times that because he went west, he began a new journey to explore new art models, including schemas, pen and ink, and the construction of interest.
Chen Hang in a sketch courtesy of the interviewee
Huang Zongxian, academic dean of the School of Arts of Sichuan University and deputy director of the Theory Committee of the China Artists Association, commented on Chen Hang: "In the farewell of 'tradition', it is best to adhere to tradition. Chen Hang lost the stylized schema and the method, but adhered to the pen and ink rhyme and freehand spirit, and introduced a landscape pattern that implied the spirit of Chinese calligraphy and painting art and was not normal for the audience.
In the middle of 1991, Chen Hang followed Mr. Duan Qiding, a master of landscape painting, into Tibet to collect wind. The new exotic land allowed Chen Hang's vision to enter a completely unfamiliar world, "The feeling in Lhasa at that time was that although the elements of modern civilization had begun to integrate, the Tibetan compatriots still retained their strong and distinct traditional cultural characteristics. The impact of Tibet on me is very large, the intricate architectural structure and ornamentation, the naked wrinkles of the mountains and rivers are stacked, so that the picture in my pen must be recreated. Chen Hang recalled.
Chen Hang
"Before I went to the west, I have always been doing traditional calligraphy and painting, which can be said to be a state of great love, such as traditional calligraphy, from the beginning of the Second King, from the Upper Han Dynasty to the Great Seal, to the Lower Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Two Song Dynasties, and the study of Song and Yuan painting, I was just staying in school, and the daily trilogy was writing, reading, and painting, and I really did not expect that since I went to Tibet in 1991, it has changed the direction of my artistic progress." Chen Hang said that after 2000, all his energy has been focused on the western region. He walked through the Yunnan-Tibet, Xinzang, Sichuan-Tibet, and Qinghai-Tibet lines; he also stationed in the southern and northern Xinjiang regions to repeatedly sketch his life; to the southwest, he walked more than 7,000 kilometers of the tea horse ancient road, completing the tea horse relics in Yunnan; Shaanxi, Qinghai, and Bashu were also the places where Chen Hang's creation was created.
"The aesthetic taste of the northwest is different from the taste of the mountains and rivers east of the Central Plains, and Chinese painting says 'far', not the meaning of distant, but the meaning of 'infinite meaning'. The western part takes 'Cangyuan' as the general tone, and then there are 'desolate', 'strange far', 'majestic', 'illusory', and then a layer of meaning is 'dark far'. Chen Hang's experience is that the content of painting the western things may be secular objects, but it reveals a strong spirituality, and it is a pure release with a "religious" state.
Ali 120cmx190cm 2017
Among the above western aesthetics, Chen Hang believes that in his paintings, "Ali" can represent "Qiyuan", "Kailash" is "Xiongyuan", "Yangguan", "Jiayuguan" and other works are "Cangyuan", and "Three Dangers and Silence" has the meaning of "Meditation".
In the early years, Chen Hang drove to Tashkurgan alone, and he felt that he was on another planet in a trance. "This is the characteristic of the Western Regions, the population is very sparse, but its humanities have a kind of god-like spiritual existence, full of covering that land. For example, in Tibet, even if you go to Ma Pan Yong Wrong, you are almost at ali tulin, and there is no one in many places in the middle of the road, but it always feels that it releases a spirit. This spirit and the local culture, whether it is religious belief, or the breath of national life that it exudes, their spirit is fully covered in those uninhabited places, this is this feeling. Therefore, Chen Hang summed up the characteristics of the west as "mountains and rivers in the humanities, humanities in the mountains and rivers", you see that it is a mountain, in fact, it is humanistic; you say that it is humanism, it is an absolute wilderness, it is a mountain.
Chen Hang further elaborated: "There is also a situation in the west, when you walk and see a mound with the Gobi, it is already a natural mountain, and as a result, when you look closely, it is the ruins of the Great Wall of the Han Dynasty. Therefore, humanities and mountains and rivers are inseparable from each other. ”
The western region is developing, and the strong sound of the times from the collision of modern science and technology and the desert is also stirring Chen Hang. In 2016, Chen Hang stopped in Dunhuang all year round to feel the local spring, summer, autumn and winter. "One snowy day, I was driving in the Gobi Desert, and the Lanxin Line opened up from afar, until it came close to it and sped past. The snow is white, and the high-speed rail line crosses the Gobi Desert, and this strong sense of interweaving of ancient and modern makes me very shocked. ”
The Lanxin Line runs from Lanzhou in Gansu in the east, passes through Jiayuguan at the western end of the Great Wall, and reaches Urumqi in Xinjiang in the west, which is the lifeblood of China's great western transportation network. Chen Hang created the "Big Yin Lan New Line" in this regard, "How to convert it into pen and ink?" If you want to be realistic, you have to use a lot of white, but I use the color of the Gobi plus the ink color as a performance element, which can reflect this unique regional horizon, which is also a work that represents my current thinking. Chen Hang said.
"Big Tone Lan Xin Line" 200cmx220cm 2018
Chen Hangshanshu has worked hard in the theory and practice of calligraphy. He studied under a famous teacher and received a doctorate in calligraphy. Writing into painting is an inevitable means and way to present the spirit of freehand, and over the years Chen Hang has indulged in the study and practice of traditional calligraphy and painting theory and method, and has walked out of his own clear vein. The use of deep and spontaneous scorched ink in his works shows the profound foundation of his traditional brush and ink, and he cannot see the slack and weak brush and ink, and the dot paintings are always full of spirit. The uncertainty and ambiguity in Jiao Mo's brushwork have a deep fit with the sense of chaos, vastness and remoteness of the western land.
In the group paintings of "Shazhou Diary" represented by "Jade Gate Ruins" and "Yangguan" in this exhibition, Chen Hang let the audience experience the beauty of calligraphy. "Once this pen begins, how to live next, whether it can be connected with the previous stroke of qi to the end, the whole process of the pen line is coherent, just like writing cursive, let people have readability." I think this scorched ink language is the best expression of the essence of the West, more valuable than visual reality. Jiao Mo is both simple and rich, and the west is also like this. Chen Hang said.
"Jade Gate Ruins" 50cmx50cm, 2016
Cheng Dali, a librarian of the Central Research Museum of Literature and History and vice president of the Chinese Painting Society, commented at the exhibition that it is precisely because Chen Hang has grasped what is in his genes that his works are moving. "This gene is bold and vast, ancient and mysterious." From this natural ecology, to the humanistic ecology nurtured under this natural ecology, and then to the expression language of the artist, an organic logical chain has been formed. ”
Sometimes Chen Hang's paintings are full of interest, and his brushstrokes are solidly extended to every corner of the current realistic landscape of national life, and all the street clutters such as board cars and telephone poles that were difficult to draw in the past can be written into fun. Chen Hang wants to promote his own expression and exploration of the characteristics of the western region through unfamiliar motifs, "If you don't touch the things that are very extensive in the west, it is difficult to find their commonalities, so it is not only strange but also extensive." For example, if I paint brooms, tractors, stones (mani piles), prayer flags, and even a tower, can I be considered a subject matter? And many of the utensils they use, I like to draw brooms, the materials and wrapping methods used are different from those in the Central Plains. What's the point? These are certainly the things of the locals, full of the way the locals live and their spiritual habits, as well as an attitude held by life. This makes this way somewhat different from our original, very different. It can reflect the current life of the people in the west from many aspects, and what are their eating habits like? Like what? I'll just put it into this. ”
In the tradition, literati painting is to see the sexual spirit in simplicity. Chen Hang pondered, "Can you block out the taste of the literati first?" Will the expression of a completely unfamiliar thing, which also forms the expression of pen and ink, be equally advanced? In fact, I think that the principle and tradition in this can be connected, and it is another thing in vision, but it also has a height. ”
In the exhibition hall, several such works are also exhibited, from the utensils on the Tea Horse Ancient Road to the melons, fruits and vegetables, Chen Hang has been depicted. In these works, Chen Hang turns objects into pen and ink, close to reality and filters tedious details, retaining a flickering impression, which is wonderful between similarity and dissimilarity, so that the breath of western life reaches the bottom of the audience's heart. Huang Zongxian therefore commented on Chen Hang's works: "Familiar and unfamiliar, it is the impression that Chen Hang's western landscape gives people, and it is also an important feature of his innovative breakthrough in landscape painting. ”
With the opening of the exhibition, "Journey to the West - Chen Hang's Landscape Painting Collection" was also published at the same time. Chen Hang wrote in the afterword: "At present, it is difficult to do art, multiple value judgments make almost all 'styles' and 'vocabulary' face challenges, each choice seems to be able to find a reason to revitalize and have words, and the generalization of artistic values makes the development path of Chinese painting 'suspicious'. What I most want to express in "Journey to the West" is that I am more willing to follow the existing path of Chinese painting, and at the same time have the courage to face nature, pay attention to the times, express the present, and make logical interpretation and prospecting. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Shi Gong