[Press Release]
About What is Revealed by the Tide – Wang Taocheng Solo Show
Nestled squarely in between the various poles of male and female, East and West, modern and ancient, reality and dreams, capitalist and socialist, abstract and realistart, Wang Taocheng’s artworks float through multifaceted contradictions. “What is Revealed by the Tide,” presents a complete overview of his artistic direction over the past year. It includes his favored format of hand-scroll paintings, portraits with a palimpsest perspective, several installation works and a short videomade in the gardens of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt. ”What is Revealed by the Tide” is the name of a nearly lost dance form, but what entrances the artist is the aesthetic atmosphere contained in these words. When he began researching the original dance, he encountered a dearth of information — but his sense of loss eventually transformed into a new understanding of the world: there is no source of everything; at the same time there is also no end to everything. The artworks exhibited in “What is Revealed by the Tide” involve many fragments of stories and settings. While the narrative style is evident in these works, there islittle direct or logical relationship between them. They depict ancient European court culture and Chinese gardens, as well as various still lifes, people and animals. Realism and abstract brush-strokes meld together, supporting each other while at the same time containing and limiting each other. This frustration of understanding also creates a sense of beauty and which engenders a subtle visual appreciation.
