Long Museum West Bund will hold Affective-Imagoism Art: Sang Huoyao’s Solo Exhibition·Shanghai on October 27th to November 26th, 2019 which will be curated by international well-known curator Gregor Jansen. This exhibition is a systematic display and sorting of the achievements of the art exploration of Affective-Imagoism Art made by Sang Huoyao, an ink painting artist of significant influence in China in the recent twenty years.
According to the combination of the rhythmic exhibition space in Long Museum and the unique artistic style of Sang Huoyao’s works, curator creates the whole exhibition as a spring-greeting blossom time-space tunnel from the earth to the heaven and eventually back to the earth, which bringing the audience a metaphysical immersive spiritual experience and a brand-new aesthetic experience in the vision.
Today, the era is bound by technology and desire under the process of globalization. With the rapid pace, covering, refreshing and shielding have become what everyday concerns. From the perspective of Oriental philosophy, Sang Huoyao focused on the issues of existence and disappearance, rationality and sensibility, space and non-space, etc. The accumulation of ink in his works not only dispels the reality or thematic content, but also implies the shielding of the existing reality and the elimination of the material society. Through the method of overlapping and shielding, the pattern appears to be nothing in the plane, the imago in Sang Huoyao’s works actually contains the reality of metaphysical speculation. The glory of the human and divine which coming from the self-witness realizes the individual consciousness in speculative free-access. That is also a kind of annotation of artistic conception of Affective-Imagoism Art.
This exhibition is divided into four parts: "the world opens up on a secluded spot", "the universe leads to an enchanting view", "the unity of heaven and human" and "the perfection in everyone’s own free will". There is a total of 52 works that mainly easel paintings, as well as installations, collages and new media. Most of them are created in the past ten years. Into those works Sang Huoyao poured his real feelings and integrated into the contemporary aesthetic context. Single pieces or series display which inspires the connection between individuals and groups of works and constructs the visual effect of Affective-Imagoism Art aesthetics: mysterious, lofty, pure, quiet and profound.
Several of the large pieces are closely integrated with 12-meter-high exhibition hall in the museum. Among them, the work "Deeply Believe" (538 cm x 660cm) resides audiences into black hole in the universe and raise audiences’ awareness of the space and time. And the work “The Ideal World” (398 cm x 1090cm) is to reflect on the uncertainty of the reality and the future. Other groups (size 538 cm x 218cm) are combinations of large size colorful ink paintings. They are a kind of transcendent thinking and record for the natural and life. At the same time, 12-meter-high silk scroll of ink painting installation "Love Songs on the Mountain" will rise straight up in the middle of the space. Its gentleness is singing for our era and life.
Sang huoyao has been engaged in the creation of Chinese literati art for quite a long time. He is deeply familiar with the tradition of painting art in Song and Yuan Dynasty, especially Mi Fu’s and Ni Zan’s painting art. With the transformation of social modernization, he has been adhering to the contemporary of Chinese ink painting and the exploration of the internationalization of ink painting since 1998. Sorted out from his own creative practice, he combines the eastern philosophy and aesthetics with an artist’s unique comprehension to the present. Then his continuous pursuit of metaphysical spiritual purport gradually formed a methodology of squares overlapping and his own theory of Affective-Imagoism Art, then they eventually become his own unique art language and symbols. He successively held his solo exhibitions in the National Art Museum of China, Today Art Museum, China Arts Museum and Guangdong Museum of Art.
The symbol of those squares is inspired by the symbols of hexagrams in the Book of Changes and Chinese characters. The form of square is rational and a kind of control, while the infiltration of ink is uncertain and a kind of anti-control natural force, just like the natural taste of cracked ice pattern in some Chinese porcelain. Through continuous applying colors to paintings by a single stroke of squares, Sang Huoyao makes all of concrete objects and images in the space appear one by one. Here reason and sensibility interweave with each other to form a spiritual universe space that can be magical.
The process of accumulating ink is also the process of time and energy accumulation. The touch of "jade" and the form of cracked ice pattern of porcelain by continual accumulating in a way of meditation show the slice of time and space of life and the chaotic universe. It also obtains the time thickness and space dimension, reopens the plane of painting, dissolves the existing existence, and conveys the emptiness, peace and tranquility.
The barely visible sense of light in the middle of the work emerges from the cracks overlapped by squares through the special infiltration effect of Chinese ink, which forming the shock and penetrating power of "the fusion of light and Chi". Light, which originates from the conduction of cosmic particles, has the form of movement through time and space. In the consciousness of human life, light has divine power. Everything has a crack, and the light always shines where there is the most spiritual value.
About the Artist
Sang Huoyao who is born in 1963. He graduated from the department of traditional Chinese painting in China Academy of Art with a master’s degree. Now he is a member of the Artistic Creation Steering Committee in Chinese National Academy of Arts. He is also the vice-president of China National Academy of Painting. He is the creator of Affective-Imagoism Art. Adding to his multi-varied background is also his experience as a researcher in the "Wu Guanzhong Research Center" in Tsinghua University and a member of Chinese Artists Association. His works have been collected by National Art Museum of China, China Arts Museum, Zhejiang Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art, as well as the Today Art Museum in Beijing. They can also be found at the venue of the G20 Hangzhou Summit and China International Import & Export Expo under long term display. Now he lives and works in Beijing.
About the Curator
Gregor Jansen, an internationally well-known curator, art critic and free-lancer author. Now he is the director of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. From 2005 to the end of 2009, he headed the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe. At Kunsthalle Duesseldorf exhibitions amongst others with Hans-Peter Feldmann, KRIWET, Tomma Abts, Chris Martin, Koo Jeong A, Tal R, Yin Xiuzhen, Michael Kunze, André Thomkins, Marijke van Warmerdam, Song Dong, Liu Xiaodong as well as Joseph Beuys at How Art Museum, Shanghai.Now he lives and works in Germany.
