DSL Magazine: Issue 6

On the other hand, the large acrylic paintings by Wang Guangle (b.1976) remind us of the work done on colors by such American artists as Morris Louis in the 1960s or Mark Rothko. At the same time, the repetition of the gesture allows the artist to work with an empty, open, mind akin to that of the Taoist philosopher or to Zen. Looking at these works, people do not suspect that the author is Chinese and Wang relishes this ambiguity. At the beginning he gave himself to repetitive painting so as to recover an interior serenity, which he was lacking. His series Terrazzo required much work and concentration, and was for him a therapy: with small, successive and precise strokes of the brush, Wang reproduced on the canvas the motifs of those Italian floorings, made of natural stones and broken fragments. This series was for him a step toward abstraction. The repeated gesture reminded him of a tradition in his native village, whereby aging persons must paint their own coffin. Every year they have to put a new layer of paint so as to keep the coffin in good state. The artist drew inspiration from this for his series Coffins (2007-2009) where he superimposed lines over one another. This technique is very time- consuming, and this makes him think about the passing of time and about death. The form, then, decreases in importance: it is time itself which he portrays, trying to find possible visual expressions for it. In these cases, Western art can be considered a base from where to elaborate a truly creative gesture combining the foreign influence with deep cultural roots.