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Suling Wang inédita(da)1

Paco Barragán

A veces tenemos una idea vagamente precisa de cómo enfrentarnos a un trabajo como el de escribir un texto,mas el propio proceso creativo en esas mismas ocasiones nos sugiere otros senderos. En este caso, tras habervisto las obras de Suling Wang en el almacén de Soledad Lorenzo y haber estado durante unos días pensandoen diferentes líneas de trabajo que deseaba desarrollar, preparé un borrador con preguntas para enviar a laartista con el fin de recabar, cerciorar o sencillamente desechar posibles conceptos o interpretaciones acercade su obra.

Recuerdo que en uno de aquellos ratos en los que en mi mente se agolpaban de manerainconexa palabras como Taiwán, emigración, neobarroco, horror vacui, globalización, paisaje, statuspolítico, memoria o método compositivo, me llegaba desde el CD “Back and forth/We get the most/Yeah, thebest of both worlds”2. Difícilmente creo en la casualidad, más bien en la causalidad, y pensé que ese es uno delos rasgos que define a Suling Wang y a otros artistas ajenos al mal llamado mainstream, que gracias a suesfuerzo y sacrificio nos permiten acceder a “lo mejor de ambos mundos”.

Cuando recibí las contestaciones dos días más tarde en mi correo electrónico, Suling mesugirió que el texto adoptase la forma de una entrevista dado que las preguntas, por lo visto, le habíanpermitido ordenar sus ideas y había volcado en ellas una información, relativa tanto a su experienciapersonal como a su manera de entender la pintura, que consideraba de interés para poder acercarnos a ellacon más argumentos. Y, a poder ser, en versión “unedited”, o sea, tal cual, sin editar, sin corregir.

Debo admitir que me sorprendió la petición, pues había hecho una serie de preguntas ala carrera para consumo interno sin verdaderamente pensar que alguna vez fueran publicadas, preguntasmás bien destinadas a ayudarme a rellenar esos huecos que me faltaban. Pero, y para ser justos, también deboadmitir que me sorprendió la seriedad y extensión con la que Suling se había tomado el cuestionario, y aún

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más ciertos detalles personales que contenían las respuestas. Y como al final creo que los mejores trabajos sonaquellos que responden al deseo del artista –demasiado a menudo olvidado por los diferentes estamentosartísticos que olvidan que sólo y únicamente existen gracias a su creatividad–, no me ha sido difícil acceder aesta petición (tampoco he cambiado nada en las preguntas, como cuando a uno se le escapa un conceptoimportante y, antes de entregar la entrevista a imprenta, reintroduce ese concepto en la pregunta para dar lasensación de que conoce mejor la obra de lo que verdaderamente la conoce).

Aquí tiene entonces el lector a Suling Wang “inédita(da)” en ambos sentidos: sin editary en el sentido de “desconocido” o “nuevo”. Sólo me he permitido añadir entre corchetes algunas ideas oinformación que contemplaba en mis líneas de trabajo.

[Suling Wang nació en Taiwán en 1968. Se mudó a Londres con el fin de estudiar ar te en

el año 1993, donde vive y trabaja desde entonces. Se trata de una artista que se nutre de

dos culturas y cuyo perfil no encaja del todo en ninguna de ellas, ni en al actual ni en la que

dejó atrás. Este biculturalismo es un elemento clave en su obra. En este sentido, es interesante

citar a Irit Rogoff cuando afirma que “En una configuración anterior existía una necesaria

alianza entre identidad (ser rojo, ser francés, ser musulmán) y la ubicación de esa identidad

dentro de una localización nacional, regional o cultural (ser turco, ser norteuropeo, o ser

del mundo del arte). Sin embargo, en el momento actual, la dependencia mutua de estas dos

categorías se ha ido perdiendo de manera intrigante3.]

Paco Barragán –¿Te identificas como artista taiwanesa?Suling Wang –Me considero taiwanesa, pero mi arte se ha desarrollado gracias a mi estancia en

Londres y mis viajes por el mundo. Como consecuencia de ello, pienso en mi trabajo como elde una artista enmarcada dentro de una tradición mundial. El desafío ha sido siempreencontrar una manera de pintar que se relacionara con “quién soy yo” al tiempo quereflexionara acerca de una experiencia contemporánea más amplia.

P.B. –¿Visitas Taiwán a menudo desde que te fuiste en el 93?S.W. –Toda mi familia aún vive en Taiwán, y suelo visitarlos cada año con motivo de la celebración

del Año Nuevo chino.

P.B. –Taiwán aún no goza de un status político4 definitivo. La identidad –nacional, política,social– es en mi opinión un elemento importante. ¿Cuán importante es para ti, y debemosentender que tu trabajo lo aborda (in)directamente?

S.W. –Sólo tiene importancia en el sentido de que he tenido una experiencia cultural muy particular.Crecí bajo la ley marcial durante más de 20 años, pero tuve una infancia muy feliz. Solía mirarlos globos de propaganda, que venían flotando a través del Estrecho de Taiwán, y acababanexplotando en el aire soltando una lluvia de folletos, mas no tenía una conciencia real de lo que

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significaba ser taiwanés. La política en Taiwán es un asunto emocional, pero como artista noestoy interesada en involucrarme en ella.Para mí, y hablando desde un punto de vista formativo, fueron más importantes las influenciassociales y religiosas de mi educación. Podrían ser descritas como “sincréticas” en el sentido deque, en el Taiwán rural, las creencias de la gente procedentes del Budismo, Taoísmo, la religiónpopular o los cultos ancestrales se mezclan sin ningún tipo de diferencias ni categorizaciones.Y, socialmente hablando, existen muchas influencias chinas, japonesas y populares en la vidadiaria. La cotidianidad en Taiwán está aún llena de rituales: el paisaje ha de ser respetuoso condiferentes dioses y espíritus, y los principios de la energía han de ser tenidos en cuenta cuandointeractuamos con el entorno. Como consecuencia de ello, mi interpretación del paisaje escompletamente diferente a la perspectiva Occidental. Así mismo, ello también influye en lamanera en que entiendo la realización de una pintura o un dibujo.

[La globalización ni es continua, ni es igual, ni es democrática, y viene determinada por los

diferentes modos de acceder a ella y por la ubicación geográfica desde donde se acceda a

ella. “El viaje no sólo entendido como ocio, negocio, estudio o vir tual, sino también como

exilio, diáspora o emigración de muchedumbres desordenadas e intranquilas de vida silenciosa

sin historia.”5]

P.B. –Te mudaste a Londres y estudiaste Historia del Arte de acuerdo a nuestra visión o canonoccidental, que es bastante limitado. No obstante, existen referencias visuales y culturales deTaiwán en tus obras –caligrafía, tradición oral–. ¿Podrías hacer algún comentario al respecto ofacilitar información más específica?

S.W. –Tratándose de mi historia personal, debo decir que hasta los 7 años sólo hablaba taiwanés,que es una lengua sin una auténtica tradición escrita. Mi madre sólo hablaba en ese idioma y,como consecuencia de ello, no sabía ni leer ni escribir, y esto ha sido así durante generaciones.Esto explica que yo tenía una comprensión del mundo que estaba basada en la tradición oral,lo que constituye una manera de pensar acerca de la historia muy particular, que está basada enel parentesco y la utilización de la imaginación cuando se cuenta un relato.Mi padre también hablaba taiwanés, pero fue educado a la manera japonesa de acuerdo con lasleyes coloniales de la época. De igual modo, fui educada en chino y debí estudiar caligrafíachina, lo que fue una experiencia importante por dos razones: en primer lugar, me facilitó lacomprensión del gesto a la hora de hacer una imagen abstracta; en segundo lugar, mi educaciónformal intentaba excluir mi propio idioma e historia cultural, lo que como artista me hacía aúnmás consciente de la fragilidad de mi propia herencia.

[Suling Wang es una artista neobarroca tanto conceptual como formalmente. Las obras se

convierten en ese gran teatro que es la vida y nos ofrecen de manera original e inesperada

una visión del mestizaje del mundo que nos rodea. Es difícil escapar a la idea barroca del

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horror vacui cuando observamos cómo diferentes elementos se arremolinan con fuerza

–de fondo siempre un tranquilo paisaje– para cubrir el lienzo.

Su pintura es colorista, de trazo expresionista, enérgico al tiempo que espontáneo. Sus

obras me sugieren la idea del tsunami, esa fuerza que surge de repente y arrasa todo lo

que encuentra a su alrededor, perotambién como metáfora del cambio. No debemos olvidar

que Taiwán ha pasado en un brevísimo lapso de tiempo de ser una sociedad rural a una

muy urbanizada con un crecimiento económico muy fuerte. Esto acarrea las lógicas tensiones

sociales y psicológicas.]

P.B. –Tus pinturas no se quedan quietas, pues son tranquilas a la vez que dinámicas. Observocalmados paisajes en el fondo, y en el primer plano una suerte de tsunami marcado por unaspinceladas más gruesas y ondulantes. ¿Sería esto una metáfora aceptable? ¿Podría tambiéntratarse de un guiño a los grandes cambios que está sufriendo Taiwán en estos momentos?

S.W. –Eso sería tal vez una interpretación demasiado literal, pero la noción del flujo es importante.El paisaje en Taiwán está siempre cambiando debido tanto a fuerzas de orden natural como ala industrialización. Mi experiencia es la de haber vivido en un entorno rural sin electricidad niagua corriente, sin televisión ni nevera, y sólo un único teléfono en toda la aldea; y de repenteen sólo unos años un cambio repentino de una sociedad agraria hacia una vida moderna.Aunque esta experiencia pueda resultar excepcional hoy día, se trata de cambios a escalainternacional y no sólo característicos de Taiwán. Me he percatado de que las fuerzas delcambio son tanto internas como externas. La idea central en todas mis pinturas es la de aislarun mundo personal y reconstruirlo pieza a pieza. Es la idea de una realidad que estácontinuamente en un estado de flujo o disolución, fragmentándose y luego convirtiéndose enun todo antes de caerse de nuevo a pedazos. Así, la pintura se convierte en una manera de darsentido al mundo.

[“Los que padecen fiebre obtienen gran alivio de la contemplación de fuentes, ríos y arroyos

pintados, hecho que está en la mano de cualquiera comprobar ; pues si por casualidad está

una noche en la cama y no puede dormir, no tiene más que representarse en la imaginación

las aguas y fuentes límpidas que en alguna ocasión haya visto, o un lago quizá, y su sensación

de sequedad se esfumará al instante y el sueño vendrá a él dulce y profundo...”

Leon Battista Alberti]

P.B. – Gran parte de tu trabajo reciente se centra en paisajes y marinas (Orogeny, River Loops,Erosion Plots…) donde mezclas tiempo y espacio. ¿Esta manera emocional de entender elpaisaje está relacionada con una interpretación nostálgica del país que abandonaste?

S.W. –Pienso en mis pinturas en términos más abstractos. No las leo literalmente como paisajes omarinas, aunque a menudo me refiero a ello. Estoy más preocupada por la descripción de unespacio abstracto. Sin embargo, a menudo me refiero a este espacio abstracto como un lugar,

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un lugar que podría habitar u ocupar, aunque me lo imagino más frecuentemente en el presenteo en el futuro que en el pasado.

P.B. –En tu obra existe un interés constante por la orografía (orogénesis, montañas, rocas, colinas,acantilados...) y agua. Supongo que esto tendrá que ver con el paisaje taiwanés, como es elcaso con esta serie, que en parte está inspirada en el Parque Nacional de Taroko. ¿Existealguna razón en particular por la cual se haya convertido en un elemento clave de tu trabajo?

S.W. –Esta preocupación se refiere a un interés por los orígenes y cómo el entorno los refleja. Hacealgunos años, nos vimos obligados a dormir en el jardín durante un tiempo debido a que unterremoto había dañado nuestra casa y teníamos miedo a futuros temblores. Es interesante quelos movimientos de las placas terrestres que inicialmente formaron Taiwán al empujarla fueradel mar, ahora brinden una metáfora para una suerte de incertidumbre psicológica.Creo que las pinturas no están inspiradas en lugares específicos. Se trata más bien de que lapintura inspira una asociación con un lugar. Tal vez sea una idea muy oriental, una forma depanteísmo que procede del Chuang-Tzu: un hombre sueña en que se ha convertido en unamariposa, mas desconoce que se trata de una mariposa que sueña con ser hombre. Parece muyfantástico, pero se trata realmente de una idea muy simple que halla un paralelismo en lamanera en que me aproximo a la pintura.

[Suling Wang tiene un “estilo de la casa”. Su manera de entender el paisaje es muy particular

y en ella confluyen de modo harmonioso figuración, abstracción, gesto expresivo, trazo

caligráfico y una suer te de figuras tipo dibujo animado. No obstante, observamos en sus

creaciones un interés por el paisaje en el sentido clásico del término de la voluntad de

racionalizar y aprehender en palabras el caos de la naturaleza como ya describió Leon Battista

Alberti en 1450 en De Architetture.]

P.B. –Tienes una manera muy personal de entender el paisaje, y nos resulta muy fácil decir que setrata de un sulingwang. ¿Cómo es tu relación con el paisaje “clásico” (De Giorgone,Tintoretto, Della Francesca) o va tu interés más hacia arte o artistas contemporáneos?

S.W. –Supongo que existe una relación con Tintoretto, pues en cierta manera estoy intentando crearuna cosmología, y encuentro a Piero Della Francesca interesante debido a la manera en quesitúa las formas, concibe el espacio y la quietud que eso evoca, pero, como ocurre con cualquierartista, tengo intereses muy amplios. Los turner de la Tate Gallery me causaron una fuerteimpresión cuando llegué por primera vez a Londres, al igual que mucho del artecontemporáneo que he visto en galerías y museos internacionalmente. Así mismo, tambiénexiste una relación con la noción china clásica de la pintura de paisaje, que está caracterizadapor una apertura de la composición, en contraposición a la idea occidental de enmarcar lacomposición. Para mí esto constituye una idea muy fuerte.

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P.B. –Tus obras muestran una interesante mezcla entre figuración y abstracción. ¿Se trata de algoque ocurre inconscientemente o existe en ti un firme interés en empujar los límites entre laabstracción y la figuración como reflejo de lo que la pintura contemporánea puede ser?

S.W. –Se podría decir que ambas afirmaciones son verdad. Es importante para mí tener unaaproximación abierta que permite que sucedan cosas inesperadas de manera accidental. Estopuede hacer que progresen las obras en un intento por crear algo nuevo. Igualmente, tengo unconocimiento del arte contemporáneo, pero a veces es necesario romper esas convenciones conel fin de ser sencillamente fiel a la intención original. Por otro lado, es importante que lapintura siga cambiando con el fin de que siga siendo relevante.

P.B. –¿Estás considerando el uso de otros medios como la fotografía, el vídeo o lo digital a la horade pintar?

S.W. –Recuerdo que siendo niña mi primer impulso creativo fue trazar un línea a lo largo del suelocon un palo y agua de un charco. Lo hacía cada mañana. Me recuerdo mirando con muchaintensidad las nubes pasando a lo largo del cielo mientras lo hacía antes de encontrarme con mimadre que estaba en el campo recogiendo la cosecha en una de las granjas cercanas. Parece queexiste una íntima relación entre la experiencia de la naturaleza y ser creativo. En aquella épocalas cámaras y las fotografías eran escasas. Como ocurría con la mayoría de los niños, misegundo aliciente era crear pequeñas esculturas con materiales naturales. En el futuro estoyinclinada a intentar desarrollar las formas en mis pinturas hacia lo escultórico, pero me gustaríahacerlo de una manera que funcione en relación con materiales modernos y arquitectura.

P.B. –Estoy interesado en conocer tu modus operandi, es decir, tus diferentes niveles compositivos.S.W. -El acto de ir al estudio a diario a pintar y pensar acerca de la pintura es muy importante, pero

cada pintura es diferente. Nunca sé cómo voy a empezar una pintura; no existen pasospredeterminados u ordenamientos de las capas a la hora de hacer la pintura. Existen muchascapas, a veces cientos, con muchas borraduras y cambios que pueden o no ser visibles. Lasformas están organizadas y definidas sobre múltiples planos, impuestas en un período detiempo. Ello permite que las pinturas puedan ser leídas tanto en términos de tiempo comoespacio.Me interesa esta conciencia del tiempo cuando uno compone o mira un cuadro; me interesa esetira y afloja de la imagen. Es una suerte de contra-moción. Lo veo como una suerte derespiración, una respiración para el ojo. También pienso en ello en relación con las ideastaoistas acerca de la energía de vida como señaló Laozi: “todas las formas vivientes... regresan acasa de nuevo dando una vuelta”.

P.B.- ¿Cómo es la relación entre las obras sobre papel y los cuadros? Son más pequeños y másíntimos. ¿Los podemos considerar como obras preparatorias para los cuadros o se mantienenpor sí mismas?

S.W. –En las obras más grandes utilizo los chorros como una manera de dibujar, y existe unaestrecha relación entre la pintura y el dibujo en todas mis obras. Las obras sobre papel existencomo cuadros de derecho propio dado que siempre estoy intentando expandir el dibujo hacia la

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pintura y la pintura hacia el dibujo. Para mí no existe una clara distinción, aunque la escalapueda producir una experiencia diferente a la hora de observar.

P.B. –Gracias.

1. Entrevista realizada por correo electrónico el martes 17 de enero de 2006. Me he permitido una licencia idiomática con el“ineditada” ya que no existe en castellano como traducción del inglés “unedited”, que sería “no editado, no corregido”, pero laentrevista también tiene mucho de “inédita”. La traducción al castellano es mía.2. Robert Palmer, Best of Both Worlds.3. Irit Rogoff, “The Where of Now”, en catálogo exposición TIME ZONES: Recent Film and Video, Tate Modern,commisariada por Jessica Morgan y Gregor Muir, octubre 2004, p. 87.4. Originalmente poblada por personas de descendencia malayo-polinesia, Taiwán fue descubierta y colonizada en 1590 por losholandeses, y después a lo largo de los siglos por un número cada vez mayor de pobladores procedentes de China. En 1895China cede la isla de Taiwán o Formosa a Japón en virtud del Tratado de Shimonoseki como consecuencia de su derrota en laGuerra Sino-japonesa (1894-1895). Desde 1949 Taiwán ha estado gobernada por el Kuomintang (KMT), el régimen políticode la República China que había gobernado gran parte del país. En 1949 acaba la guerra civil (1926-1949) y el KMT huye aTaiwán derrotado finalmente por el Partido Comunista Chino, que desde entonces gobierna la China continental. Desde 1949hasta 1987 el KMT instaura la ley marcial en la isla. Las primeras elecciones democráticas se celebraron en 1996, y en el 2000el Partido Progresista Democrático sale elegido. El sistema jurídico y diplomático es muy complejo.5. Cita de mi texto Yo soy el espacio donde estoy escrito con motivo de la exposición de Do-Ho Suh en la galería Soledad Lorenzoen enero-febrero 2004.

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Suling Wang unedited1

Paco Barragán

Sometimes we have a vaguely precise idea about how to go about a task, like that of writing a text, although at times

the actual creative process itself can suggest other paths. In this case, and after having seen the works of Suling

Wang in the warehouse of Soledad Lorenzo and having spent some time thinking about the different lines of work

that I wished to develop, I prepared a draft with questions to send to the artist. The aim behind this was to gather,

assure or simply to reject possible concepts or interpretations related to her work.

I remember one of those moments when my mind was crowded with unconnected words like Taiwan,

emigration, Neo-Baroque, horror vacui, globalization, landscape, political status, composite memory or method

that raced through my head from a CD “Back and forth/ We get the most/ Yeah, the best of both worlds”2. Casualism

or chance is something that I tend not to believe in, and prefer rather to think in terms of causality; and I realised

that this was one of the characteristics that defines Suling Wang and other artists outside the inappropriately called

mainstream, whose work has allowed us to gain access to “the best of both worlds” thanks to their effort and sacrifice.

When I received her answers two days later by email, Suling suggested to me that the text could adopt the

form of an interview, as it appeared that the questions had allowed her to order her ideas and she had wholeheartedly

given information, relative to both her personal experience as well as her way of understanding painting, that she

considered interesting in order to bring us closer to and understand more about her. She also asked that if possible,

she would prefer the interview to be “unedited”, that is, as it appears, without editing, without any corrections.

I must admit that her request surprised me, as I had asked her a series of rushed questions for internal purposes

without really thinking that they were ever going to be published, questions which were intended more to help me

fill in the blank spaces that I had. But, and to be fair, I must also admit that I was taken aback by the importance

and extension that Suling had given to filling in the questionnaire, and even more so by certain personal details that

the answers revealed. And as in the end I believe that the best works are those that respond to the artist’s desire

–all too often forgotten by the different artistic strata that tend to forget that they only and solely exist thanks to the

artist’s creativity–, I did not find it difficult to give my consent to this request (Neither have I changed anything in the

questions, such as when an important concept escapes one’s mind and before handing the interview in to be printed,

we reintroduce the concept in the question in order to give the impression that we know the work better than

what we really do).

So the reader has before him/her Suling Wang “unedited” in two senses: that of not edited and in the sense

of “unprecedented” as in “unknown” or “new”. I have only allowed myself to include in brackets some ideas and

information that I have added from my research.

Paco Barragán –Do you identify yourself as a Taiwanese artist?Suling Wang –I consider myself Taiwanese, but my art has developed through being in London and my travels

out in the world. I therefore think of my work as an artist as being in a world tradition. The challenge was always

to find a way of making a painting that relates to who I am, but reflects on the wider contemporary experience.

[Suling Wang was born in 1968. She moved to London to study art in 1993, where she has lived and

worked ever since. She is an artist who is fostered by two cultures and whose profile does not really fit

in properly with either of them, not the present one or the one that she left behind. This biculturalism

is a key element in her work. In this sense, it is interesting to quote Irit Rogoff when he states that “In a

previous formation there was a necessary alliance between identity (being Red, being French, being

Muslim) and the placing of that identity within a national, regional or cultural location (being Turkish,

being Northern European, being of the art world). In the current moment, however, the mutual

dependence of these two categories has been loosening in intriguing ways3.”]

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P.B. –Do you visit Taiwan regularly since you left it in 1993?S.W. –All of my family still live in Taiwan, and I visit them every year to celebrate the New Year.

P.B. –Taiwan still does not have a definite political status4. Identity –national, political, social– is in myopinion an important issue. How important is it to you and can we understand that your work deals(in)directly with it?S.W. –It is important only in the sense that I have had a very particular cultural experience. I grew up under

martial law for over 20 years, but I had a very happy childhood. I used to watch the propaganda balloons, which

had floated across the Taiwan Straights, burst in the sky and let down a rain of paper leaflets, but I had no

real awareness of what it meant to be Taiwanese. Politics in Taiwan is an emotional issue, but as an artist I am

not interested in being involved in politics.

More formative for me were the social and religious influences of my upbringing. These could be described

as syncretistic, in the sense that in rural Taiwan popular beliefs from Buddhism, Taoism, folk religion and ancestor

worship, are all combined without any clear differences or need for categorisation. And socially there are many

Chinese, Japanese and folk influences on daily life. Everyday life in Taiwan is still full of rituals; the landscape

has many gods and spirits to be respected, and energy principles to be understood when interacting with

the environment. As a result, my interpretation of the landscape is completely different than from a Western

perspective. It also deeply affects the way I approach making a painting or drawing.

P.B. –You moved to London and studied Art History accordingly to our Western vision or canon, which isvery limited. There are nevertheless visual art references or cultural references from Taiwan in your paintings–calligraphy, oral tradition–. Could you comment on this or provide some specific information.S.W. –In terms of my own personal history, until the age of seven I spoke only Taiwanese, which is a language

with no real script. My mother spoke only this language and therefore could neither read nor write, as it had

been for generations before her. I therefore had an understanding of the world, which was based on this

oral tradition. This is a particular way of thinking about history, which is based on kinship and using the

imagination through storytelling.

My father also spoke Taiwanese, but was educated in Japanese in accordance with the colonial rule at that

time. Similarly, I was educated in Mandarin Chinese and had to study calligraphy. This was an important

experience for two reasons. Firstly, it gave me an understanding of the gesture in abstract image making.

Secondly, my formal education attempted to exclude my own language and cultural history, which as an artist

made me more aware of the fragility of my own heritage.

[Globalisation is not continuous, nor is it equal, or democratic. What determines it are the different ways

in which we gain access to it and the geographic location from where it is accessible. “Travel not only

understood as a pleasure, business, study or virtual trip, but also as exile, Diaspora or the emigration

of disorganised and restless masses of people coming from a silent way of life without any history5.”]

P.B. -Your paintings do not sit still, they are at the same time calm but dynamic. I see tranquil landscapesat the back and at the front a sort of “tsunami” marked by thicker undulating brushstrokes. Is this anacceptable metaphor? Could it also be a hint of the great changes Taiwan is experiencing right now?S.W. –Perhaps that would be a too literal interpretation, but a notion of flux is important. The landscape in

Taiwan is always changing through both natural forces and industrialisation. My experience is one of growing

up in a rural environment without electricity or running water, with no televisions or refrigerators and only

one telephone in the village, then with a sudden change from an agrarian to a modern life over just a few years.

Although this experience might seem rare today these changes are international and are not unique to Taiwan.

I have come to realise that the forces of change are internal as much as external. If there is one central idea

in all my paintings it is the idea of taking apart a personal world and reconstructing it piece-by-piece. It is

the idea of a reality, which is continually in a state flux or dissolution, fragmenting and then becoming whole,

before falling apart again. In this way painting becomes a way of making sense of the world.

[Suling Wang is a Neo-Baroque artist both in a conceptual and formal sense. Her works become a part

of the great theatre of life offering to us in an original and unexpected way a vision of mixed races of

cat 1/2/06 19:38 Página 37

38

the world that surrounds us. It is difficult to escape form the Baroque idea of horror vacui when we see

how different elements are swirled vigorously around –in the background there is always a peaceful

landscape– in order to cover the canvas. Her painting is colouristic, with an expressionist brushstroke,

energetic at the same time as spontaneous. It appears to me that her works suggest the idea of a tsunami,

that force that suddenly appears wiping out everything that it finds in its path, but also understood as

a metaphor of change. We must not also forget that in a very short time span Taiwan has gone from

being a rural society to an extremely developed one that boosts an exceptionally strong economic

growth. This of course logically has given rise to certain social and psychological tensions.]

P.B. –Most of your recent work is focussed on landscapes and seascapes (Orogeny, River Loops, ErosionPlots…) where you mix time and space. This emotional way of understanding landscape is it related to anostalgic interpretation of the country that you left?S.W. –I think of the paintings in more abstract terms. I do not read them literally as landscapes or seascapes,

although I often allude to this. I am more concerned with describing an abstract space. However, I often

refer to this abstract space as a place, which I could inhabit or occupy, although more frequently it is imagined

to be in the present or future rather than the past.

[“Those suffering from a fever are greatly relieved by the contemplation of painted fountains, rivers

and creeks, a fact that anyone can attest to; for if in bed one night one cannot sleep, one need do no

more than picture to oneself crystalline waters and fountains one may have once seen, or a lake perhaps,

and the sensation of dryness will vanish instantly and sleep will come sweetly, deeply...”

Leon Battista Alberti]

P.B. –In your works there is a constant interest in orography (orogeny, mountains, rocks, hills, cliffs…) andwater. I suppose this has to do with Taiwanese landscape like this series, which in part are inspired in theTaroko National Park. Is there any particular reason why it has become a key element in your work?S.W. –I suppose this relates to an interest in origins and how the environment reflects them. A few years ago,

we had to sleep in the garden for a period of time because an earthquake had damaged our house and we

were worried about future tremors. It is interesting that the plate movements, which first formed the island

of Taiwan by pushing it out of the sea, now provide a metaphor for a kind of psychological uncertainty.

I think the paintings are not inspired by specific places; it is more that the painting inspires an association

with a place. Perhaps, this is a very Eastern idea, a form of pantheism, which comes from the Chuang-Tzu: a

man dreaming of being a butterfly, but not knowing if it was the butterfly dreaming of being a man. It

seems quite fantastic, but really it is a very simple idea, which has parallel in the way I approach the subject

of a painting.

P.B. –You have a very personal way of understanding landscape, and we can easily say it is a Suling Wang.How is your relation to “classical” landscape (De Giorgone, Tintoretto, Della Francesca) or is your interestfocused in more contemporary art(ists)?S.W. –I suppose there is a relationship with Tintoretto, because in a way I am attempting to create a cosmology,

and I find Piero Della Francesca interesting because of the way he positions forms, conveys space and the

stillness this evokes, but as with any artist, my interests are quite broad. The Turner paintings in the Tate Gallery

made a strong impression on me when I first arrived in London, as has much of the contemporary art I have

seen in galleries and museums internationally. There is also a relationship with a Chinese notion of classical

landscape painting, which is characterized by an openness of composition, as opposed to the western idea

of framing the composition. For me, this is a very strong idea.

[There is a “homely style” about Suling Wang’s work. Her way of dealing with the landscape involves a

harmonious converging of imagination, abstraction, expressive gestures, calligraphic brushstrokes as

well as cartoon like forms. However, we can also observe in her creations an interest for landscape in the

classical sense of the term, in the will to rationalise and apprehend through words the chaos of nature

as Leon Battista Alberti already described in 1450 en De Architetture.]

cat 1/2/06 19:38 Página 38

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P.B. –Your works show an interesting mix between figuration and abstraction. Is this something that happensunconsciously or is there a firm interest from your part to push the limits between abstraction and figurationas a reflection on what contemporary painting can be?S.W. –Both statements could be said to be true. It is important to have an openness of approach, which

allows unexpected things to happen through accident. This can move the paintings forward in an attempt

to create something new. Equally, I have an awareness of contemporary painting, but sometimes it is necessary

to break what are considered to be conventions just so that I can be faithful to my original intentions. Either

way it is important that painting keeps changing in order for it to be relevant.

P.B. –Do you take into consideration the use of other media like photography, video or the digital whenpainting?S.W. –I remember that as a child, my first creative impulse was to trace a line across the ground with a stick

and water from a puddle. I did this every morning. I remember vividly watching the clouds moving across

the sky as I did this, before walking to meet my mother who would be picking crops on one of the farms nearby.

It seems there is an intimate relationship between an experience of nature and being creative. At that time

cameras and photographs were rare. As with most children, my second impulse was to build small sculptures

out of natural materials. In future, I am inclined to try and develop the forms in my painting into sculpture,

but I would like to do so in away that functions in relation to modern materials and architecture.

P.B. –I’m interested in knowing your modus operandi, that is, your different compositional levels.S.W. –The act of going to the studio to paint and think about paintings everyday is important, but every painting

is different. I never know how I will begin a painting; there are no predetermined steps or ordering of the layers

to making a painting. There are many layers, sometimes hundreds, with many erasures and changes that

may or may not be visible. The forms are organized and defined on multiple planes, and layered over a

period of time. This allows the paintings to be read in terms of both time and space.

This awareness of time when composing or looking at a painting interests me. I am interested in the push/pull

of the image. It is a kind of contra-motion. I think of it as a kind of breathing, a breathing for the eye. I also think

about it in relation to Taoist ideas of life energy as Laozi said, “all living forms… go round home again”.

P.B. –How is the relationship between the works on paper and the paintings? They are smaller and moreintimate. Can we consider them as preparatory works for the paintings or do they just stand on their own?S.W. –In the larger paintings, I use the drips as a way of drawing, and there is a close relationship between

painting and drawing in all my work. The works on paper exist as paintings in their own right because I am

always trying to expand drawing into painting and painting into drawing. For me, there is no clear distinction,

although the scale might produce a different experience when we are looking.

P.B. –Thank you.

Translated by L. Kerslake

1. Interview carried out by email on Tuesday 17 January 2006.

2. Robert Palmer, Best of Both Worlds.

3. Irit Rogoff, “The Where of Now”, in catalogue exhibition TIME ZONES: Recent Film and Video, Tate Modern, curated by Jessica Morgan

and Gregor Muir, October 2004, p. 87.

4. Originally settled by people of Malay-Polynesian descent, Taiwan was discovered and colonized by the Dutch in 1590, and then by an

increasing number of settlers from China over the centuries. In 1895 the island of Taiwan or Formosa is ceded by China to Japan by

virtue of the Treaty of Shimonoseki as a consequence of the defeat suffered in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). From 1949 onwards

Taiwan was governed by the Kuomintang (KMT), the political regime, which had prevailed in most of the Republic of China. In 1949 the

Chinese Civil war ended (1926-1949) and the KMT fled to Taiwan and was finally defeated by the Chinese Communist Party, which has

continued to govern the Chinese continent from then on. From 1949 to 1987 the KMT established the martial law on the island. 1996

saw the celebration of the first democratic elections in Taiwan, which led to the election of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000.

The legal and diplomatic system is very complex.

5. Quote from my text I am the space where I am written on the occasion of Do-Ho Suh’s show at Soledad Lorenzo in January-February

2004.

cat 1/2/06 19:38 Página 39

Ga.jpg

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Written by Sarah Richardson,

Keeper of Fine Art at the Laing Art

Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Published to accompany an

exhibition shown at

Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery,

21 January – 2 April 2006

Laing Art Gallery,

Newcastle upon Tyne,

13 April – 9 July 2006

The National Gallery, London,

20 July – 17 September 2006

The Northern Rock Foundation,

the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

and at the National Gallery by

The Bernard Sunley Charitable

Foundation

Sponsored at the Laing Art Gallery

by solicitors Ward Hadaway

© National Gallery Company 2006

Supporting the National Gallery

www.nationalgallery.co.uk

Photographic creditsAll pictures © The National Gallery, London, except: Amsterdam © Van Gogh Museum (Vincent Van GoghFoundation). Bristol © By Permission of Bristol Museums& Art Gallery. London Arts Council Collection, HaywardGallery © Copyright the artist. Victoria Miro Gallery © Courtesy the Artist/Victoria Miro Gallery. Tate © Copyright the Artist/Tate, London 2005. The Victoriaand Albert Museum © V&A Images/V&A Museum,London. Thomas Dane Gallery © Copyright the artist,courtesy Thomas Dane, London. Newcastle upon TyneLaing Art Gallery, Tyne and Wear Museums © The Artist’sFamily. Norwich Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection,University of East Anglia © Estate of Francis Bacon 2006.All rights reserved, DACS, London. Photo James Austin.Southampton City Art Gallery © Courtesy of the artist.Photo Bridgeman Art Library, London.

9 7 8 1 8 5 7 0 9 3 9 7 1

ISBN 1-85709-397-6

5253

35

PASSION FOR PAINTayres

bacon

bomberg

brown

constable

courbet

davenport

degas

van dyck

gainsborough

van gogh

hals

kossoff

monet

murillo

rembrandt

reni

renoir

rubens

sargent

seurat

shaw

turner

veronese

wang

Passion for paint new.qxp 23/12/05 14:32 Page 521

PASSION FOR PAINTa national gallery touring exhibition in partnership with bristol’s museums, galleries & archives service and tyne & wear museums

Passion for paint new.qxp 23/12/05 14:32 Page 522

passion for paint 15

The elements of Suling Wang’s multi-focus

composition are generated through different

treatments of paint, which is itself the principal

subject of her picture. Like Monet, her paint

handling creates an expansive, shifting sense of

space. Ribbons of colour set up an undulating

rhythm intended to suggest the movement of

air forwards and back within space, linking the

picture to a traditional Eastern concept of

landscape painting. This connection is underlined

by the title, which refers to a river in the artist’s

native country of Taiwan. Outlined shapes are

represented flying into and out of the space,

while smudges and tendrils of black paint

suggest islands floating in the landscape. Thin

trails of paint bleed across the composition,

sometimes combining with veils of washy colour

to suggest surfaces of water or land, but also

breaking free to become pure colour. The

brightness of the colours deliberately negates

associations with the natural world, concentrating

attention on the complex interplay of varying

paint effects. These are enhanced by the artist’s

use of oil paint in particular areas, as its lustrous

depth of colour contrasts with the matt quality

of the acrylic paint used on most of the picture.

SULING WANG

(born 1968)Liwu River Loops, 2005Oil and acrylic on canvas, 200 � 185 cmCourtesy the Artist and VictoriaMiro Gallery, London

Passion for paint new.qxp 23/12/05 14:33 Page 15

October 23, 2012

Edition: U.S.

G. Roger Denson Cultural critic, essayist, novelist and screenwriter published with Parkett and Art in America

Going Forward in Reverse: The Present Tense(ion) of History Painting (Banisadr, Howe, Dalwood, Steir, Taaffe, Quayola, Wang)

In the last decade, the painters Ali Banisadr, Dexter Dalwood, Catherine Howe, Pat Steir, Phillip Taaffe, and Suling Wang, along with one exceptional digital animator from London named simply Quayola, have produced remarkably strong painting as a result ot their immersions in the history of painting and other cultural forms. Whether the artist is painting a still life (Catherine Howe), a battle scene (Ali Banisadr), a landscape (Suling Wang), a hybrid of popular and art history (Dexter Dalwood), or digitally programming chance algorithms in the production of video paintings (Quayola), each of these painters is redefining the meaning of History Painting with a specific

ideological intent. As for those painters who have used art history as a departure for their work for decades, (Pat Steir and Phillip Taaffe), they can be seen producing some of their most spectacular work today as derived from the remnants of art and cultural history. Whether or not the new emphasis on art history originated as a consciously-deployed Conceptualist-styled defense against the proscription of painting pronounced by artists and critics of the 1970s and 1980s is a subject of debate. But either way, the strategy of premising painting in art history seems to have proven successful in anchoring the painterly productions of at least the seven artists featured here.

Pat Steir and Philipp Taaffe are two artists who stand out for not only enduring the decades of painting's neglect, but for also advancing their own brands of painting throughout the 1980s and 1990s by citing cultural histories as the central contextualization and function of their work. In the late 1980s, Taaffe initially achieved recognition for his superficial identification with Neo-Geo painting, which ironically appropriated formalist art to advance social theories of power and dissent. Although Taffee scavenged for richly endowed visual motifs among the architecture and ornament of the Meditereanean, North African and Asian cultures, it was his initial interest in grafting such motifs onto iconic forms and structures identifiable with the heroic modernist painters Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Beverly Pepper and Victor Vasarely that gave him credibility as one of the new ironic post-conceptualists. It also helped that at a time when Western intellectuals were being influenced by the new global, post-colonial cultural studies that Taaffe sought out and assimilated non-Western, pre-colonial motifs into his paintings and prints.

As Taaffe's work gradually assumed the aura of the new cultural nomadism being advanced by critics like myself in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he showed more confidence in directing attention specifically to the authentic Islamic art and architectural histories of Cairo, Fez, Istanbul, Isfahan, and other historical Islamic centers. By the mid-1990s, Taaffe clearly had become a nomadic ideologist collecting and conjoing historical motifs derived from the traditional cultures of India, China, Japan, and the various nations of Africa and the Mediterranean. Taaffe by all appearances had become so enamored with making the nomadic assimilation of world art-historical motifs the basis of his prints and mixed media paintings, that he easily became the most capaciously nomadic artist of the last two decades.

Throughout the years that Conceptual Art dominated the art press, Pat Steir remained committed to authentic, non-ironic painting, though even her waterfalls paintings, in their attachment to Abstract Expressionism, doubled as ironic citations of Chinese art history. Steir's attachment to painting may be credited as the reason why her formidable accomplishments were not always commended with the critical approbation they deserved. But by the mid-1990s, critics became more acutely attuned to Steir's excursions into the history of Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan painting that informed thirty years of her work. The majority of this period was devoted to a series of waterfalls and mist paintings born from Steir's interest in the painted scrolls of the Tang (618-907 CE) and Song (960-1269 CE) dynasties. By thinning her paint to the consistency of a wash, keeping it restrained, flat, and ungraduated, as if it were an ink, Steir evoked the pictorial surfaces of Tang and Song landscapes,

though as if seen up close through a zoom lens tightly framing only the representation of waterfalls. Steir also explored the full spectrum of vibrant color in her Lhamo series, in which she had turned to centuries-old Tibetan Tonka paintings for chromatic cues.

Although Steir's compositions were composed from no more that thinly-hued washes allowed to cascade down a vertical canvas, the rhythmic intervals between each downpour came to echo the mountain contours found in Tang and Song landscape paintings. In this sense, Steir mimics a natural history in which the contours of mountains come to support waterfalls and determine the water's course, even as the water perpetually rasps out the contours and furrows of the mountain.

Even Steir's decision to close in on the waterfalls rather than articulate the contours of rocks and gullies is informed by art history. The flat, frontal emphasis she favors is derived from Romantic painting made in the last decades of the eighteenth century, from whence we can coherently compare certain of Steir's paintings to the Swiss artist Caspar Wolf, when he painted mountains and waterfalls frontally and parallel to the picture plane while radically depicting a spatial ambiguity that, in the words of the art historian Jean Clay, "makes the foreground seem unstable and floating." Some watercolor paintings of waterfalls by J.M.W. Turner also appear to inform Steir's work of the 1990s and 2000s, particularly those that bring the wall of the mountain and waterfalls so close to the frontal plane of the canvas that they reduce the illusionistic three-dimensional recession to almost nothing.

In 2010, Steir has turned to the historical motif of the nearly endless line. It's a motif that harkens back to mystery cults of Crete in bearing resemblance to the thread that Theseus unwinds as he circumnavigates the labyrinth in search of the Minotaur. Considering that the labyrinth was analogized with eternity among the stars, and commemorated with the constellations (Taurus, Ariadne's Crown), the nearly endless line becomes a metaphor for the soul, psyche, or spirit believed to fill each living thing and tying them together in the nearly endless continuum that is the sky.

Steir's 2010 Whitney Museum installation, Another Nearly Endless Line, seems to derive from a more empirical history, the same history that is the source for the myth informing the design of the Cretan labyrinth. It is also a history of the sky, though this time a history long documented by astronomers and astrologers. I'm referring to the observed retrograde, stationary, and redirect motions of the planets relative to the Earth's orbit. The seemingly erratic motion of Mercury is thought the most likely astronomical history informing the myth of the Minotaur's labyrinth. Both Steir's Another Nearly Endless Line, and A Nearly Endless Line, installed at the Sue Scott Gallery in New York, certainly bear uncanny resemblance to graphs of Mercury's direct-retrograde-stationary-redirect motions in the sky -- and which from the earth appear to be labyrinthine in changing directions a total of seven to nine times per year. The ancients came to represent these back and forth passings of the Earth by Mercury as a circuit of recursive swings enclosed by a circle (the orbit of the planet around the sun), and which became a symbol for the Cretan Labyrinth of the Minotaur. Since then the symbol of labyrinthine motion has cropped up in the symbology of the world, from the circular maze set into the floor of Chartres Cathedral to the illuminated manuscripts of the Qu'ran. Like Pat Steir, but with a deep sense of ancestral heritage, Suling Wang reaches back to the Chinese Song, Tang, and later dynasty painters who thought of painting as thought-in-action. Born in Taiwan, it is only natural that Wang perpetuates a principle memorialized by the 12th-century commentator, Chang Yen-yuan, when he writes: "Painting perfects culture, governs human relations and explores the mystery of the universe. Like the rotation of the seasons, it regulates the rhythm of nature and man." In the shadow of such an overarching aesthetic ideology, it is little wonder that Wang would be interested in reprising principles and styles of Chinese art.

Westerners generally don't realize that Wang's abstract paintings not only reprise abstract expressionism. She is also citing the contributions of such ancient Chinese artists as those known as the i-p'in or "untrammelled class" of Tang Dynasty painters (618-906 CE). Some centuries later, the haboku or "flung- and splatter-ink" painters of Japan, who influenced both the art of Taoism and Zen Buddhism, would also take up the innovations of these rebels from across the sea. In the West, Abstract Expressionism is generally proclaimed the great American contribution to late modernism, just as in Japan, the haboku artists of Japan received much recognition for their own splattered ink-scapes. Strictly speaking, however, both schools resemble the much earlier innovations of the i-p'in painters and their followers. The reason that this history isn't better known is because the i-p'in painters of China were viewed as radicals of their day, and thus as potentially devastating to Chinese orthodoxy.

Other of Wang's paintings evoke the Tang Dynasty innovation of p'o-mo, the broad movement of a brush heavily diluted with thin ink and the pronounced splotches it produces across its material support, often creating shapes without clearly recognizable contours. Wang's gestural paintings in this respect aren't as closely related to the existentialist marks of the abstract-expressionist as they are to the free-form splashing technique that the p'o-mo painters, whose interests in painting landscapes only took on the vaguest contours of mountains and rocks serendipitously, while betraying their very real technique as an application of a few quick brush strokes that were not so easily recognizable as mountains and rocks. Such historic paintings were achieved with very wet applications of ink onto silk spread out over the floor. Wang has also lived extensively in London, and she cites as influences the art of Disney, Japanese manga, and the ukiyo-e prints of Japan's Edo period. In those paintings that are most difficult to identiry a single or dominant art history, multiple histories may be functioning at once, producing a dynamic visual tension, but also a historical paradox, given that the principles from which these artistic movements derived were in ways antithetical. In this regard, Wang exemplifies how contradictory and oppositional principles may cancel each other out logically, they can be made to cohere and coincide with a unity when applied judiciously in a visual composition.

No doubt our reluctance to leave behind history to instead paint pictures or abstractions free from historical reference indicates that we are still in some mid-stream of our re-evaluation of painting begun in the 1960s. This was, after all, the period we called postmodern, with painting having seemingly come to its logical finality and exhaustion at the end of the modern era. Now the preoccupation with looking back at the history of painting is what follows.

If we instead follow the lead of the art critic Thomas McEvilley, we might come to understand that this is just one more cyclical development. In fact, McEvilley sees it as one of many past modernisms followed by postmodernisms -- or what, always in retrospect, historians have called classical periods followed by post-classical periods. McEvilley cites the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Indians, and Renaissance Italians as all having produced modernist and postmodernist epochs. And we may, through his example, easily imagine the modernisms of China, Japan, Persia, Turkey, Nigeria, Peru, and Mexico among others doing so. Modernism was our classical period; postmodernism and whatever we wish to call our present global, nomadic and relativistic development, is our post-classical phase. And though we may for the moment be preoccupied with histories of painting, history itself shows us that the post-classical periods similarly predisposed to looking back rather than looking forward is what eventually leads to a new forward-looking classicism. And one that includes a rich diversity of painting.

Read other posts by G. Roger Denson on Huffington Post in the archive. Follow G. Roger Denson on Facebook and Twitter.