Shanghai-based artist Wang Tiande’s first exhibition at Contrasts Gallery, on show from September 8-October 9, 2008, will feature evocative new ink paintings, installation, and video. An opening reception will be held on September 8, 2008 from 2pm – 4pm at No. 181 Middle Jiangxi Road, G/F, Shanghai, China.

Wang Tiande’s work embodies the essence of traditional Chinese art, redefined in a modern context. His intention is to have the work convey an alternative perspective, a new emotional response. His unique approach consists of burning symbols, resembling Chinese characters, onto rice paper. In lieu of a brush, he uses incense to experience his distinct visual language. The characters themselves possess no meaning, only to convey information. As the burn spreads across the scroll-like work, both horizontally and vertically, it recreates the mountains and water.

In his Gu Shan series, Wang Tiande experiments with digital photography. His black and white images reference traditional Chinese landscape paintings. The work is both nostalgic and ambiguous. The deliberate, manipulated compositions are clearly landscapes – ones that have been distinctly modernized by the mounds of ashes burned from Xuan paper constructed to resemble a vast mountainous range.

Wang Tiande seeks to show the progression of traditional ink painting to a threedimensional, contemporary realm. With ink painting largely referencing traditional Literati concepts, this exhibition captures a new expression that reflects contemporary culture, while incorporating conceptualist ideas. Wang Tiande recreates ink brush painting for the twenty-first century.

As both an artist and a professor, Wang Tiande strives to harmonize and balance traditional artistic practice with contemporary relevance. He is currently the Director of the Art & Design Department at Fudan University, Shanghai and the Dean of the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art. The burn marks made by his cigarette symbolizes the transition between the development and placement of calligraphy in past cultures to the representation (and loss) of calligraphy in today’s society. Wang’s meaningless
characters are counterpoints to today’s information-based society and the need for answers provided through electronic media, newspapers and the Internet.

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Wang Tiande graduated from the Chinese Painting Department at Zhejiang Fine Arts Academy (now the Chinese Academy of Art) in Hangzhou, China. He currently resides and works in Shanghai. His work has been widely exhibited throughout China, Europe and the US. He is collected by renowned museums including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Hong Kong Museum of Art; Shanghai Art Museum; Guangdong Art Museum and the Shenzhen Art Museum.