SHAN-SHUI

2020

Wang Dongling

*1945 in China

In 2016, Dongling Wang, one of China’s greatest calligraphers, displayed his calligraphy on a 32-metre-long glass board based on the script I Ging. Back then, the China Daily reported: “At the exhibition being held at the Tiamiao temple on Monday, titled Between Heaven & Heart, Wang will display a piece work of “chaos calligraphy”. At that time, he wrote the Chinese divination classics I-Ching (Book of Changes) on a glass wall, performing live to an audience. A glass wall was filmed from the position of the back-projection, exclusively for the projection triennial in Bad Rothenfelde, in an attempt to capture Dongling Wang’s unique style of calligraphy. The master’s strokes appear in real time on the blackthorn walls of the New Graduation Tower, just as though a hidden camera were filming the master calligraphying an old scroll from a gigantic organic scroll. This attempt to capture a centuries-old writing technique using digital means serves not only to bridge social distancing needs in times of COVID-19, but also draws a connecting line between the current digital age and China as it was 3000 years ago.

Dongling Wang launched his exhibition entitled Between Heaven and Heart at The Imperial Ancestral Temple Museum in Beijing in 2016, among other things, and participated in the group exhibition Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2013. For more information on Dongling Wang, visit https://www.inkstudio.com.cn/artists/57-wang-dongling/overview/