A+ Contemporary and Asia Art Center are pleased to announce the opening of “Visible Light”, Dong Dawei’s solo exhibition, on May 27th, 2017 at Asia Art Center Taipei ll. The exhibition is on view through July 1st, 2017.
Colors as carrier of light are the pathway into inciting emotions and perceptions; as in our understanding of this world, colors are the intrinsic nature of light and thus the embodiment of “visible light”.
A crucial facet in understanding Dong Dawei’s work lies in his creative techniques through colors and logic. He ingeniously conflates colors, time and space thoroughly to let it cultivate and grow freely which allows his work to take on a unique appearance as the material and the immaterial (space-time) blend into one another. In this solo exhibition, Dong Dawei presents his two signature series – pastel and marker series – to discuss painting’s purity, unpredictability and variations in repetition.
In his pastel series, Dong Dawei uses pastels to draw series of color blocks on different textured materials; the powders flutter and drift downward by gravity – the fallen dust finds itself suddenly intertwined with time and space, creating brilliant color spectrums on the surface. The artist’s meticulous arrangement is a deliberate attempt to stir up immediate response, making time freeze at the very moment when the pastel dust falls. The marker series began as a simple oversight – as an uncapped marker pen with its tip in contact with paper, the ink stain started to grow and spread outward as if a droplet plummeted into the calm water, causing ripples to radiate upon impact. Each of the ink stains bears the difficulty and predicament that the artist faced in the process; through temperature, humidity, time, strength and other organic factors, the ink stains seep deeper and deeper into the paper fibers under the artist’s meticulous control.
Dong Dawei’s work sheds light on the otherwise undetected details of the everyday, allowing the naturally fallen pastel dust and ink stains to assume the leading role, seamlessly preserving the most instantaneous action eternally on the canvas; it abandons a representational narrative approach and instead opts for simple compositional elements such as point, line and plane to restore colors’ intrinsic nature as “visible light”. Through rhythmic and precise repetitions, Dong Dawei is able to manipulate a singular creative approach to its fullest potential, achieving the gentle and delicate qualities in the subtlest changes.
About the exhibition
Dates: May 27 – Jul. 1, 2017
Reception: May 27 (Sat.) 4pm
Venue: Asia Art Center Taipei II
Address: No. 93, Lequn 2nd Rd. Taipei
Courtesy of the artist and Asia Art Center Taipei II.
