Author ZHANG Li
In “The Deluge”, Wang Ningde’s compositions are formed of collected plant materials and viewers see traces of plant specimens left behind on paper. Once alive, the plants are manipulated by the artist, leaving behind visual information about their former shapes; baptized by water, they transform into art to be admired. This novel method of image generation results in works that correspond to conventional visual concepts embedded in everyday life and culture, reminiscent of impressionist paintings. The series includes static images of plants within a compressed space, against colorful backgrounds, their embedded forms inhabit a space between randomness and intentionality, and the dried ink creates rich layers of expected and unexpected colors. Based on these concepts, viewers may unconsciously interpret “The Deluge” through the lens of their visual experiences. However, despite the way in which these images fall in line with conventional notions of form and color, “The Deluge” is imminently surprising because its pieces were not created by the artist’s brush or camera: they are the direct imprints of objects. That is the captivating aspect of these works. Initially, viewers see what they expect to see—three dimensional forms emerging from myriad closely woven details, situated against vibrant backgrounds. However, when they learn more about the works in this series, they encounter an opportunity to self-reflect and scrutinize how they construct images, and how their previous aesthetic experiences inadvertently come into play when confronted with a new image.
With vivid and concise presentation, “The Deluge” reveals the richness of the natural world. Although the works are created from imprints left behind by living organisms, the level of detail presented in each piece has reached a zenith. “The Deluge” harnesses the power of microcosms, presenting astonishing details in the most minute aspects. Through the flow of water, the artist shows us a world that is anything but empty. Space can be infinitely occupied, and in the end, after everything has passed, the world that is left behind is not meaningless. In this sense, “The Deluge” constitutes a convincing argument for a self-sufficient world, alluding to the evolutionary future of the universe as a whole.
Within this framework, plants become a substance, which must leave an imprint and disappear in order to imbue the artwork with power. This direct imprinting method is astonishing. It does not rely on the manipulation of light and shadow to convey distance or depth, rather, it places objects in direct contact with paper, resulting in traces that reflect the objects’ original dimensions and scale. These traces hold the same fascinating embodiment of time as insects trapped in amber and fossils from geologic eras long past because they are naturally formed images that hold the grandeur and tragedy of life. They are not concepts about life, but life itself.
“The Deluge” series has come into being through the interaction between water and plant life. The water covers, soaks and permeates the plants, which condense, dry, and crystalize. Using simple staining and printing methods, Wang has created imprints of the plants on paper. Of course, there is also an element of time, as often, the imprints required weeks to form. The artist has collected plants from their native habitats, created compositions by affixing the specimens onto paper, and immersed and submerged them in ink. Eventually, only the paper, ink, and imprints are left behind. The artist moves freely between randomness and intention, demonstrating exceptional mastery in how he selects samples and coordinates tones. There is a magic in mastery that eludes analysis, but it is undeniable that the images resulting from these simple and concise methods and materials are direct and powerful.
In “The Deluge” and its preceding works, Wang questions and expands on the mechanisms of producing and viewing photography, reflecting on multiple dimensions of photography’s compositional mechanisms, including the language of expression and material technology. In his works spanning “In the Years of Ningde” and “Let There Be Light,” the artist critiques the rigidity of photographic concepts. In “Form of Light” and “No Name,” Wang deconstructs and recombines how images are presented and the significance of objects. And, as he moves from “Negative Light” to “The Deluge, the artist offers a unique approach to image “reproduction.”
Here, Wang addresses the photography convention of the single-point perspective, which strives for an “objective” representation of scenes and objects. From ancient Greek sculpture to the Renaissance perspective studies, measuring has been done with the human eye. With geometry as a conceptual basis, practical tools have been used to construct recognizable objects. Ultimately, these efforts resulted in photography—image “reproduction” through the use of light and chemicals. In other words, “the image corresponds to what I see, and records what I see and perceive.” Indeed, the outcome of this contemplation and practice is regarded as a great step forward for constructing and representing the visible world, and because the resulting products possess typical material attributes, they can seem to testify to and reinforce some version of what is “real.”
Undoubtedly, photography is a great achievement for human consciousness, and history can be divided into periods that predate and follow the invention of photography. However, contemporary theory and research into human cognition suggests that our concept of the world is only partly derived from information about objects, and is in fact, heavily influenced by processes occurring within the brain. This perception and cognition process involves rapid signal compression, extensive and necessary information deletion, and swift decision-making that can mean the difference between life and death. All of these processes take place immediately, and mostly unconsciously. The brain engages in these unconscious processes in order to survive, and “meaning” is only derived when the human brain “fills in” the missing information by drawing on instinct and past experiences. This unconscious process of reconstruction is what enables our brains to perceive the things we see as “real,” requiring no further proof of authenticity. In fact, the concept of “reproduction” is constrained by evolution and biological limitations. If “true reproduction” is a construct that disregards all conditions, then images that serve as physical evidence of “the real” should certainly be subject to reflection and question.
Impressionist and Modern art perspectives reconsider the effectiveness and dominance of the single-point perspective. There is a medical phenomenon where brain damaged patients with intact eyes have a specific form of visual impairment known as “visual agnosia.” These individuals can effortlessly navigate unfamiliar obstacles such as stairways, grasp handles to open doors, and use stepping stones to cross streams. However, their ability to process shapes has been impaired, which means they have difficulty “processing” faces, reading text, or recognizing objects. Information received through their vision is obstructed, which prevents them from seeing objects “correctly,” but they are still able to interact with their environment using tactile and motor feedback. There are other medical cases which are the exact opposite, where patients can identify objects and people, but cannot accurately place themselves within the context of their environment, rendering them unable to grasp door handles, pour water into a cup, or put on clothing.
As these two extreme examples demonstrate, the world may not be as we perceive. But even if the world is as it appears, some essential and crucial elements may be entirely absent. What we see is confirmed and reinforced by touch and movement, and all of these come together to form a three-dimensional perception of space. Although the spatial perception of scenes created through the single-point perspective is established through supplementary cognition, these scenes can be “recorded” and “replayed” by the brain to create memories. Meanwhile, the processing we rely on to move through our environments happens instantaneously at an unconscious level, as a result, single point perspective, which requires “conscious” processing, becomes almost the sole representation of our world. At the same time, our evolutionary drive for survival demands a sense of control and security. This deep-seated survival instinct encourages our bias towards the single-point perspective, which reveals the limitations of human psychology while forming the basis for painting and photography.
In this sense, "The Deluge" is an explicit departure from the single-point perspective. In images that “reproduce” the world around us, creators establish a third person spatial perspective through drawing or photography. The viewer becomes the observer of the space reconstructed within the image or photo. When the viewer confronts the artwork, the space between them and the piece forms the first distance, while, within the virtual space of the reproduced image, the second distance is the distance from the assumed viewpoint from which the scene is observed to the reproduced object. This “second distance” is what allows the viewer to imagine themselves within the virtual space. They take on the third-person perspective as their own and employ their instinctive capacity for object recognition, which is what makes “reproduction” possible. All reproduced images draw the viewer into this reconstructed virtual space, and the habit of constructing this virtual space is what convinces people that the world around them is as it appears. In art history, as we retrace the rebellion against art that “reproduces,” we see that abstract art does not reject imagery; rather, it generates images. The key lies in doing away with the “second distance,” so that viewers must directly confront the reality created by the artist. In the reflection and obfuscation seen in the “Negative Light” series, and in the way objects are directly imprinted on paper in “The Deluge” series, Wang’s work only exists in the “first distance,” which is formed when the viewer sees the artwork. The composition, depth, color tones, and background do “suggest” the sky or land, and this may encourage the viewer to place the plants in “The Deluge” within a constructed place. However, this still does not constitute a virtual space because the plants are manifested in their original forms. Therefore, the viewers are not looking at simulated objects, instead, they see traces left behind by the object. In this relationship, the image is no longer a reference to the object, but the object itself.
From this perspective, “The Deluge” does conform to the three photographic elements of automatic image acquisition, a snapshot capturing a specific point in time, and a stable product that can be viewed and reproduced repeatedly. However, it is unique because its original forms are not intended to be “reproduced,” rather, the object is imprinted only once. Though the aesthetic concepts on show are rooted in the artistic traditions, the series’ unique form gives it extraordinary significance.
Wang’s work has always had a natural focus on plants, which serve as a powerful link to his childhood memories, and the scenery of his hometown influences his practice. Since his early series “Some Day,” memory and its effects have been intertwined in the artist’s creations. While he was working on “The Deluge,” Wang also created a collection of titanium plate transfers of images of trees, forests, and vegetation he photographed over the years. Though Wang may not have had a clear understanding of his intentions when taking these photos, these images of plants have become more significant than nostalgic memories of home—they have sunk into the artist’s subconscious awareness, and he continues to seek out and pore over their traces in his memory.
Plants do not need a reason to exist, but humans, as observers, do. Plants are the producers, while animals are the consumers. Plants are ideal objects for identification and understanding. When Wang was in Japan and South Korea, he realized that many of the foraged plants he encountered were indistinguishable from the vegetables he ate as a child, they were all, “vegetables that could be found in springtime.” These reactivated childhood flavor memories extended to the artist’s experiences in Europe. In other words, Wang’s body carries deep subconscious connections with his hometown, informing and changing his attitudes towards foreign lands. When he began working on “The Deluge,” these experiences led Wang to approach the native flora of his hometown with a deeper, more intense focus. The series could have been completed in Beijing. In fact, in the city, it would have been more convenient to perform some of the necessary, repetitive experimentation on technique, but Wang still chose to establish a studio in the mountains near his hometown because he wanted to integrate the environment—the quality of air, temperature, and seasonal changes—into his work.
While he worked on “The Deluge,” the world was beginning to see some of the ecological and cultural impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic played out, people confined to their homes began to say that they had become “humans forced to stand with plants.” The concept of “plant thinking,” “Gaia theory,” “plant consciousness,” and “reflecting on free will” became popular. As Wang came to understand more about the plants growing in the wilderness all around him, he studied how their forms and relationships with humans were presented in literary and art work. Due to similarities in climate and topography, some plants from Wang’s hometown can be found in the works of ancient Korean and Japanese literary and art figures, such as Hasegawa Tōhaku, a Japanese painter, and Shin Sŭngnyŏng, a Korean woman painter. While these discoveries came to influence his work, Wang also noted that the Romantic pursuit of nature—as seen in European paintings of plants, animals and landscapes—was a means of pursuing transcendence and idealism, which then led to a reconsideration of the relationship between people, land, environment, and ecology. This romanticization of nature was also accompanied by the cataloging and exploration of ballads, costumes, folk tales, and fairy tales, which reflected an awakening in Europe and the world, where ethnic groups began to seek out and form nationalist identities in the wake of the French Revolution. However, despite the maturity of landscape and flower-and-bird themes in traditional Chinese art, these did not constitute a “plant ontology,” or deep philosophical understanding of plants as integral to identity. Though they played a role as “ethnic symbols” to a certain extent, the elitist values and moral directives these plants and animals already carried in Chinese art prevented them from taking on a broader sense of “plant ontology.” When humans contemplate the universe and our place in it, civilization, religion, and morality are still unable to replace firsthand experience. Each person’s place in the world is inevitably attributed to the place where they were born and raised, and even a brief moment of pleasure on our taste buds can serve to remind us of our place in the world.
Some pieces from “The Deluge” resemble the night sky or nebulae, but are actually formed of water, ink, and countless seeds. These variations allowed the artist to explore deeper analogical spaces, begging the question: Did life begin as a random event in the vast sea of existence, or is there a consciousness or spirit that fills the universe with life force? Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman puts forth the theory that the senses only perceive and process information needed for survival and do not constitute a true reflection of the “real” world. He further proposes that consciousness is fundamental to the fabric of reality, and what we perceive as the external world—matter and space-time—is a highly compressed representation that presents only the “useful” information we need to effectively adapt to and navigate the world around us. Hoffman’s views build on the philosophy of George Berkeley, who famously said, “to be is to be perceived,” to explain the concept of consciousness in physics. Hoffman reinterprets consciousness through evolutionary theory, and emphasizes that at scales below the Planck scale, space-time and matter cannot be considered the basis of reality. At such extreme scales, other theoretical frameworks are necessary. From this, it can be inferred that whether or not life is present, objects can be pointers of consciousness, and that the world is infinitely rich and complex.
Plant seeds are the tangible roots of an intangible universe, and much like the patient who could not recognize shapes but moved freely in his environment, shape or existence should not hinder insight, and the triumph of consciousness does not diminish the material world. In this regard, Wang Ningde’s “The Deluge” points to discoveries which transcend sensory frameworks. Through the medium of water, the series describes the wonder and universality of life, as well as the vastness and diversity of our world in its many dimensions.
