Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Beijing) is pleased to present a solo exhibition by a painter and theorist Wang Shuye titled "Naked Views of Space-time – Experiments of Non-Discriminating Eyes and Mind." This is the gallery’s first presentation of Wang’s one-man show in Beijing and will showcase Wang’s oeuvre since the mid-2000 and most recent oil and ink paintings completed this year.
Wang Shuye was born in Heilongjiang province of China in 1963, and graduated from Beijing’s Central Academy of Craft Art (now renamed as Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University) in 1989. His graduation work won the Gold National Award for Excellence, the highest honor awarded by the Ministry of Trade, Education and Industry. In 1990, Wang moved to Japan and spent the next ten years devoting himself exclusively to the spiritual pursuit of art, exhibiting no work until his 2001 solo show in Kamakura. Since then he has been showing his paintings mainly in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan, in addition to holding a retrospective exhibition at the Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art in 2009 entitled "The Affirmative Vision – The World of Wang Shuye." Wang took a leading role in organizing the exhibition Neo-Mōrōism held at Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Beijing) in 2013 by contributing a theoretical essay for the catalogue. Today, Wang continues to live and work in Kamakura, producing paintings that are informed by subtle yet tenacious execution and persistent spirit of inquiry.
Wang’s paintings, often covered by a mass of countless brushstrokes, use this layered technique to depict profound scenes of tranquil beauty. These visual spaces represent a world that exists prior to becoming a subject of our awareness. Standing in front of these large canvases, the viewer is freed from the constraints of the present moment and discovers the existence of another, more mercurial space and time. Although he used to work mainly with Chinese ink and pencil, Wang began using oil paint in 2007 in order to explore new directions in his artistic practice. By giving up his reliance on outlines and contours, Wang has enabled his vision to draw ever closer to his chosen subjects – so much so that he seems to approach the very essence of their materiality.
As contemporary art and visual culture is witnessing a diversification of its forms, Wang draws inspiration from theories of phenomenological reduction and the wisdom derived from a holistic understanding of existence found in Buddhist thought, attempting to break away from epistemological and semantic worldviews. Often played out on large, sprawling canvases, Wang’s paintings render their own visual images impossible to objectify. Although, his painting motifs includes Great Wall of China and Mona Lisa, all familiar to our visual memories, his works transform them into a transcendental visual space with poetic and spiritual dimensions.
