Artist
WANG Ningde
VIP Preview
11.09 13:00-19:00
11.10 12:00-13:00
Public Hours
11.10 13:00-18:00
11.11 12:00-18:00
11.12 12:00-18:00
Location
Hall B, Westbund Art Centre,
2555 Longteng Avenue, Shanghai
Don Gallery is delighted to announce its participation in the 10th edition of the West Bund Art & Design Fair, which will take place in Shanghai from November 9-12, 2023. WANG Ningde’s solo project will be on display at Don Gallery’s booth (B Hall B302) at the Westbund Art Centre, marking the official debut of his most recent series of "Photogram - The Deluge." The Deluge series is a recently embarked project by WANG Ningde, who collected plants and seeds from a mountain in his hometown in northeastern China and used his own imaging method to depict the mountain's vegetation on a 1:1 scale. While creating a new vision of the image, the artist also brings new possibilities to the ancient technique of "Photogram" in the history of photography.
Light is the most crucial component of most photographic techniques and has been a major focus in WANG's earlier works as well. But the artist's innovative method does away with this key component and substitutes water for it, upending the "fundament" of photography. He takes off the photo paper and ink from the "dry" digital photography method and combines them with the antiquated "wet plate photography" to create a conversation. These marks between positive and negative images are reminiscent of the traces left behind by the floods that spread over the earth. The water runs and dries on the paper for a long time, and the ink carried in the process slowly records the outlines of plants and seeds.
Many cultures have myths about the Deluge, which is regarded as a global mythological theme as well as a symbol of renewal and a fresh start. Water is the foundation of all things, according to Thales, the "ancestor of science and philosophy". Plants are flooded with diluted pigments in the microcosm, and pictures are gradually deposited and captured in the light or dark. This process of submergence, recession, and emergence is a perfect parallel to the mythology of the Deluge if we consider photographic "image-making" to be the construction of the world. The new world manifests as an image.
In the context of art history, these varied plants have also been featured in the creations of artists from neighbouring Northeast Asian nations, like the mid-Joseonese painter Sin Saimdang (신사임당, 1504-1551), who was among the most well-known artists of the Joseon period, or the Hasegawa School of Painting, which was established in Japan in the first half of the 17th century by Hasegawa Tōhaku. People were exposed to similar natural surroundings and species resources due to the close proximity of climatic zones and vegetation, and they used them in similar ways, as portrayed in these countries’ art books.
Distinguished from the creativity and cultural awareness of the hometown, the artist's "topography" and collection aims to revisit and reexamine the idea of "nature" in addition to producing visuals. The imaging process gives the pieces a "natural" appearance: colours radiate from the plants' once-closed cell walls, evoking intuition. Through this non-intellectual, scientific method, they return to the world, creating images "with the power of nature and God," as Yasunari Kawabata puts it. This time, the artist relies on water to create the piece and gives back to nature the numerous pivotal moments that need to be completed in order to complete a physical sense of observation and introspection. He also applies the technique of studying the image's language to himself, which involves returning to a thing's origin and the moment of its beginning.
