One of the most eagerly anticipated solo exhibitions this year by Tan Ping, titled A LINE, drew its curtains on the afternoon of December 7 at the National Art Museum of China. This was claimed to be the first time for an abstract artist to bring his works to exhibit in the Rotunda of the museum. It highlights over a hundred oil paintings and prints by the abstract artist Tan Ping, showcasing his persistently innovative practices in integrating eastern and western cultures with abstract art. By examining Tan Ping’s oil paintings and engravings, curator Zhu Qingsheng, professor of Peking University and an important figure in Chinese contemporary art and criticism, revealed the context of this most famous abstract artist in China.

The international symposium was held at 1:30pm at the seven-story meeting hall in the National Art Museum of China. Chaired by Zhu Qingsheng, its participants included Mr. Pan Gongkai, President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Mr. Shao Dazhen, a theorist of Contemporary Chinese Art and professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, professors from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Yin Shuangxi and Yi Ying and renowned art critic and curator Mr. Huang Du. Directors, curators and researchers from all over the world including Dr. Matthias Flügge, Dean of Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Dr. Karsten Ohrt, Director of National Art Gallery of Denmark, Danish artist Mr. Bjoern Noergaard, Dr. Bartomeu Marí Ribas who serves as the Director of?Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Mr. Alexander Ochs, Director and Curator of Alexander Ochs Gallery (Berlin/Beijing) attended the opening ceremony and they respectively addressed the symposium and conducted an advanced academic communication between contemporary Chinese art and the world.

Distinguished guests discussed and explored Tan Ping’s work from their own comprehension and thinking, the value of abstract art, the development of abstract art in China and its relationship with western abstract art as well as their views on the interdisciplinary problem it reflected.

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Shao Dazhen, senior professor from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, briefly summarized the nutrients Tan’s creation has absorbed as he believed that Tan Ping’s art was inspired by the new Chinese art since the May 4th Movement, traditional Chinese art and the essence of Western classicism and modernism. He illustrated the two characteristics of Tan’s work: cultivation in good taste; unique creation different from those in Western Europe and America, moderate and tolerant with a “neutral” color.

Dr. Matthias Flügge, Dean of Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, interpreted Tan’s work from a Western perspective and he believed that the work “40 m” had a variety of possible explanations, the horizon or the lifeline? It extended to the end of live…With a kind of poetic imagination, he tried to explore the valuable meaning of Tan’s art and Tan’s role as a bridge between Chinese and Western art, the relations between his abstract art and Western modernism or classicism.

As a former classmate of Tan, Prof. Yi Ying knew Tan’s art well and he mentioned that every development of Tan’s work contradicted the main trend while reflecting his unique feature against trends. Standing in the shoes of practitioner and viewer, Yi Ying made an in-depth interpretation of Tan’s complicated development.

Dr. Karsten Ohrt, Director of National Art Gallery of Denmark, started his talk from the collection in the National Gallery of Denmark and mentioned the minimalist abstract work collection and a related collection exhibition that featured Matisse. He thought that Tan’s work reminded him of “minimalist poetry”, which was quite different from the creations of Western abstract artists and would contribute to the retrospection on Chinese abstract art by Chinese creators and theorists.

Prof. Yin Shuangxi put forward that the reflections and introspection embodied in Tan’s work belonged to the unique temperament of Chinese literati. He expressed that the title for this exhibition is of great significance for it reflected from a slide perspective that the traditional taste in China is “taking the graver as his brush while combining them both”.

Dr. Bartomeu Marí Ribas who serves as the Director of Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art talked about Tan’s practices in abstract art from a broader philosophical context. He discussed the nature of abstract art as just performances of art, which actually conveyed an artistic spirit, beauty and value.

Critic and curator Huang Du thought Tan’s concept created not only problems concerning artistic language, but it also related to sociology. He extended the discussion on Tan’s creative concept to an issue which has long existed in the research theory, that is whether we were still adapting the methods and views in Western art history to interpret Eastern art? Mr. Alexander Ochs mentioned the influences the artist’s learning experience in Berlin had exerted on his creation, from which he explained a different understanding of “A Line” for the audience through the process from the edge to the center in Tan’s creation.

Prof. Pan Gongkai held that Tan Ping’s work was free and casual since Tan’s work did not deliberately lay emphasis on the ornamental characteristic of paintings, on the contrary, he turned to show solicitude for its process and inner workings of the artist, emphasizing the recording of his actions on the screen. He said Tan’s was one of his favorite and drew a analogy of his work to those of Robert Motherwell, Tapies, Roscoe and other masters of abstract art. He believed this type of artist was constantly questioning and solving problems in their creating process. Pan creatively used the words “painting abstract” to conclude their characteristics. He summarized that Tan’s abstract art could be taken as a perfect model combining the Western art form with traditional Chinese aesthetics.

Tan Ping contributed his commissioned work “+40 m” to the National Art Museum of China when the opening ceremony came to an end. With the global concept of art, Tan Ping utilized the language of abstract art to create a perfect confluence of Eastern and Western cultures in the emotional and rational contexts of human beings. Interactive new media has been introduced to the exhibition, which would push forward the frontier of abstract art in the development of contemporary art and change the traditional way of viewing an exhibition.

The exhibition will be on view at National Art Museum of China until December 13.

Translated by Sue Wang and Photo by Hu Zhiheng/CAFA ART INFO

Preface

By Zhu Qingsheng

Tan Ping’s works belong to the third type of abstract art.

Chinese contemporary artists have long been creating distinctive works within a western theoretical framework. Now, in order to surpass the past, the Chinese art world must make a new breakthrough and interpretation to the question “what is art”. It is at the new frontier of human art, pioneered by artists from developing countries using artistic forms that are easily ignored and eliminated in contemporary art. Generally speaking, there are two extremes in the international art world's expectation of the art of these countries. One is focusing on its ideology and “political modernity”, stressing content rather than form; the other is emphasizing its characteristic forms as derived from traditional culture, instead of evaluating its artistic achievement by the criteria of originality. The former one originates from the Cold War mentality, the latter was rooted in the post-colonial mindset. If there’s any relaxation in our vigilance, these countries’ art will descend into a supplementary part of the world art, since essentially it is taken as an inferior and backward cultural phenomenon. Abstract art is an experimental way to completely avoid this dual cultural trap, because from the beginning, it neither belongs to any local art, nor was it subjected to any historical or traditional artistic concepts. Thus, any practice in abstract art will be directly tested, purely and strictly by the common standards of the contemporary international art world. Thereby, artists can break away from the blinding stress of both the “political modernity” and local cultural characteristics, and accomplish transcendence and make achievements through the “aesthetic modernity”. This is called “the third type of abstract experiment”, which has been steadily advancing, in fact vigorously in the recent decade. It belongs to neither China nor the west, but is the common feature for future art experiments of all humanity.

In this exhibition, Tan Ping presents us with a line over 40 meters long, created by a single carving. What is the significance of this "line" to abstract art? The answer represents the direct meaning of this exhibition.

The paintings of humankind constitute the pictorial history of civilization. This history consists of three not one formal route. The first one represents objects, the second one creates symbols, and the third one manifests the spirit. It is possible to only adopt one of the routes in a piece of art work, but in general all three routes are mixed together. The route of representing objects matured in Renaissance paintings. At the advent of photographic technology, it developed into video art, and nowadays film is the most influential art form. The route to creating symbols blossomed in the early period of human civilization, it later evolved into four main writing systems, and finally became the dominant route which bears language, thinking, unspeakable conception and implication, governing human culture and knowledge. When the symbol encoding and grammatical structure of modern language no longer relied on the form (of characters) itself, this formal route was differentiated on two levels. One was deep in the direction of context. Form was shaped in human thought during the process of writing and reading. There was no fixed, clear or materialized form. The other level was transformed into a code, which has become common in people’s self-certification (bank passwords and online passwords) and information exchange. The route of creating symbols opened up the system in the field of religious imagery, and developed into modern construction, drawing, recognition and experience, representing the unspeakable existence. As to the third route, manifestation of the spirit, the artist has no object or symbol, but only through the movement of his hands and feeling in his heart, infusing people's value into artificial traces, creating another way to manifest the spirit of people, which rejects any symbolic meaning.

The modern art revolution took place first in the west. One of the obvious changes was gradual, then it thoroughly broke away from the route of representing objects, and shifting art to the routes of creating symbols and manifesting spirit. Though after the fourth modern art revolution (represented by Joseph Beuys) , image appropriation and extensive use of video made the route of representing objects return to modern art and become the major means of contemporary art making, “political modernity” and the criticism of the social reality cannot replace the transcendence and creativity of aesthetic modernity. Within the art circle especially, the so-called skills appreciated by professionals beyond the fun overwhelming laymen, continue to advance towards the routes of making symbols and manifesting spirit.

The advancing trajectory of the route of spirit manifestation is abstract art. Tan Ping’s 40m+ is the promotion not only in the direction of abstract art, but also of abstract art itself. How can the promotion be impossible? Or what is the contribution of Tan Ping’s promotion? This question constitutes the major part of the exhibition. The history of abstract art experienced by the first and second abstraction, during which numerous masters emerged, great achievements were made, and people’s understanding of the world and environment changed. After the form construction was completed in the first phase, and the spiritual expression was achieved during the second period, abstract art continued evolving, seeking to manifest the existence and cultivation. The meaning of existence is universal, shared by all people. It seemed that no change or inconsistency has happened from ancient to modern times, but in one creation, it is presented as a unique art form (an artwork). Cultivation is not a momentary emotion and feeling, but infuses artists' experience of many years and lifetime education into a line with seemingly modest strength and movement. This is the third "task” which has brewed for a long time within abstract art and is now undertaken by this work of Tan Ping. The author has made multiple experiments in his own direction. In the exhibition, a systematized examination of the inheritance relationship between Tan Ping and twelve artists who have made great contributions to abstract art in history and his own breakthrough was made to prove his new contribution to abstract art with this 40-meter-long line and illustrate the new breakthrough and interpretations concerning the question “what is art” with the third type of abstract art.

"Manifesting spirit" and "representing objects" were two different artistic traditions of eastern and western art respectively. While western art perceived the world through forms and embodied the relationship between the world and human beings in forms and objects, Chinese art used lines to represent this relationship and the seemingly usual but unique status of the artist in his creation. So Chinese artists use lines not only to make images, for example, drawing a picture, but also writing a symbol and for calligraphy. This is the "brushwork" tradition in Chinese art. Line is everything." Brushwork" has existed in Chinese freehand ink painting and calligraphy for more than a millennium.

The spirit of the third type of abstract art and the concept of "brushwork" in ancient China coincide. Brushwork here is just a code, what it truly expresses is the connotation and value embodied in the process of artistic creation. It is not a temporary emotion, nor momentary, intuitive, accidental trace. Tan Ping did not use “brush” or “ink” in his woodcut. Instead, he used an engraving knife as his brush, and his ink is printing ink rather than plain ink. Tan Ping’s works are described as the third type of abstract art, because as the representation of the richest potential of human’s spirit, the connotation and value contained in the third abstraction has been transformed into a trace created by the artist with a casual motion based on his understanding of the world. This is the modern transformation of “brushwork”. The third abstraction is a unique way to manifest spirit. Artistic modernization makes Chinese traditional culture and thought a part of contemporary culture and thought.

Tan Ping's 40m+ can be interpreted as his organization, management and extraction of the space of his work. So this line is always in a moving process, sometimes hesitating, sometimes decisive, sometimes clear and deep, sometimes perplexed and helpless. It is this course of life that slowly emerges from this line. In fact, in our heart and life, this value has been preserved and this process is being experienced. Only the best artist could extract it and transform it into a visible line. The more sophisticated artistry the artist has, the more of a sufficient meaning this line presents and viewers can feel infinite levels, scenes and abyss from it. Tan Ping’s work is ultimately presented as a line containing the richest possibility. Once there is an identifiable image in it, this profound communication will be destroyed. Anything profound cannot have definite meaning. So in order to pursue the third abstraction, artists must avoid definite meaning, and reserve their inner state of existence and all their personal comprehension of the value of human beings in this line.

Tan Ping’s 40-meter-long line leads to his periodical retrospection of his spiritual journey and becomes an important part of this exhibition. When tracing the formation of this line, he based the work on the communication, struggle and battle with the artist’s situation, and on his lifetime experience, cultivation and preparation. After being infused into this “l(fā)ine”, all these continue to develop endlessly. Tan Ping is working hard with great fortitude in the current promotion of this “l(fā)ine”. During this continuous promotion, spirit has been solidified into a concrete and visible “expression”.

Clearly, 40m+ is an all-round response to and experiment on contemporary art.