Mountain Lore, will be Wang Tianxuan's first solo exhibition in Singapore. The name of the exhibition stems from Zhuangzi’s leisurely travels (Xiao yaoyou). Zhuangzi says that the book Qi Xie records the weird and eccentric. Therefore those who find fun in hills and mountains bestow their sentiments upon the landscape, and seek pleasure in it. The Chinese has a special preference to hills and rivers. To entrust your feelings to the hills and rivers is to be immersed in nature. In other word, for each Chinese intellectual, there lives in the bottom of his heart unique rivers and hills.

In this series, Wang intends to express is unnamed sentiments by depicting the hills and rivers in his own heart and imagination. To put it another way, the curious hills and landscapes on the canvas are the broad reflection of his frame of mind, solitude and memories, while the details and bizarre life forms on the painting an emblem of the sense of absurdity at the bottom of the artist’s heart. Is existence vain? Does it mean anything? Is our sense of existence enshrined in the long river of time and in the lofty tower built of experiences and memories? Or is the human race fleeing towards an unknown imagined future world? And is the price of escape the abandonment of the current world? Or maybe the erudite you believe that Wang has strayed from the point? However, the questions above are the rudimentary reasons for is work “mountain Lore.” Strange life forms live in dark and high mountains. They live incommunicado and relate a fairytale attributable to no age, no race and no nation. They live happily and lonely because they reside in his dreams.

Image: © Wang Tianxuan, Art Seasons Gallery