On May 8, 2015, Wang Dongling's solo exhibition "Writing Non-Writing" opened at the Sanshang Contemporary Art Museum in Hangzhou, featuring works from his Squiggles series, his silver-salt calligraphies on photographic paper, and his calligraphies on photographs of human bodies.
The Squiggles series interweaves characters written in the mad cursive script to the point of illegibility, destroying the structures of the individual characters and lines but magnifying the overall presence of the work. They evoke the primordial chaos of Chinese mythology and represent a breakthrough in Wang Dongling's practice.
Working in a dark room, Wang Dongling uses the photosensitive materials of silver-salt solution and photographic paper to generate richly layered and textured calligraphic works, which contain many accidental effects and are all unique and unreproducible.
In his calligraphies on photographs of human bodies, his brushwork responds subtly to the bodies' poses, by turns covering them entirely, serving as their background, and shading them like a veil.
Thousand-Character Essay from the Squiggles series, 2015, 290 x 1060 cm. Photograph by Chen Xujiang.
Seven Classics of Chan Buddhism from the Squiggles series, 2015, installation, 360 x 150 cm x 10. Photograph by Chen Xujiang.
