Chinese Contemporary Ink Art by Wang Tiande

Artist: Wang Tiande (Chinese b.1960)
Title: "Digital Series No.4 C07", 2004
Medium: Chinese ink on paper and cigarette burns
Signed and dated lower left Wang Tiande 2004.
Original gallery label on verso
Frame (wood shadow box under acylic): 52 3/4" x 25 3/4"
Provenance: Purchased from Michael Goedhuis, October 23, 2006
An important figure in the Chinese contemporary art scene, in the field of modern calligraphic art particularly, Wang Tiande was born in Shanghai in 1960. After graduating from the Chinese Painting Department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, Wang received a doctoral degree in the calligraphy department of the same school. Currently, Wang is a professor at Shanghai Fudan University. His work is held in the permanent collection of many important museums across the globe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the British Museum.
Known for his revival and reinterpretation of Chinese calligraphy and painting by exploring new medium and methods such as transposing, overlaying and burning, Wang Tiande has rooted his work in tradition but developed a novel vocabulary by incorporating imaginary characters, symbols, and even foreign letters in his work. His work projects a profound outlook from the past to the present and the future. In his early career-defining Digital series, which includes this piece on offer, he overlapped two layers of calligraphy, with a traditional ink stroke work under a layer with the characters burnt out by cigarette and incense. The work is a meditation of existence and none-existence, permanency and transiency, space and time along the historical spectrum, lost and newly found. It provokes the viewers to contemplate the nature, identity and deeper meaning of Chinese language within the cultural tapestry.