Wang Dongling: Ink. Space. Time.
Date: 5.25-8.27, 2023
Venue: The Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge CB2 1DQ
Curated by Holly Roussell
For his new, site-specific exhibition at The Heong Gallery, pre-eminent contemporary calligrapher, Wang Dongling, draws upon the writings of legendary Daoist master, Laozi, and Cambridge theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Prof. Stephen Hawking. Rendered in his characteristic 'luan shu' or 'chaos script', texts detach from meaning and dissolve into mark and trace on a monumental scale.
Wang Dongling (b. 1945, Rudong, Jiangsu Province, China) is Director of the Modern Calligraphy Research Centre at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Wang studied fine art at a teacher training college in Nanjing before the institute was closed due to the Cultural Revolution in 1966. While writing posters for the local cultural and education office, Wang discovered his passion for calligraphy, studied with master calligrapher Li Sanzhi, and enrolled in the Zhejiang Academy of Art. Since the 1980s, Wang Dongling has been at the vanguard of reimagining the ancient artform of Chinese calligraphy for contemporary times. His work is in several public collections, including The British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
Ink. Space. Time. is curated by Holly Roussell. Roussell is a Swiss/American museologist, curator and art historian specialising in contemporary art from East Asia and photography. Currently, she is curator for the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Roussell has organised more than 20 group and solo exhibitions for festivals, biennale, and museums around the world. Recent and upcoming projects include "Stars 1979", co-curated with Dr. Wu Hung, OCAT Research Institut, Beijing (2020), "Slide/Show: Light Images in Chinese Contemporary Art", UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (29.4-13.8.2023), and "Civilization: The Way We Live Now" (2.6-17.9.2023 ) Saatchi Gallery, London.
Preface
Lucy Hawking
I am delighted to introduce you to the work of calligrapher Wang Dongling, who has interpreted some of my father's most iconic statements as luanshu - chaos script - a form of calligraphy in which legible script flows at times into pure abstraction. Pairing my father's words with the writings of Laozi is an inspired choice. Both the Daoist master and the great modern cosmologist were deeply engaged with the nature of reality, the importance of spontaneaity and a sense of mischievious fun which emboldened them to reject any kind of authoritarianism. And both reached far beyond the boundaries of their terrestrial existences to commune with the immense expanses of the universe, whether through the Great Dao or by traveling back in time to the Big Bang itself. In choosing my father's words to reimagine in this way, Wang Dongling has thoughtfully illustrated a beautiful connection between these two historic figures.
My father also had deep connections with China, as did his own father, Dr Frank Hawking, a distinguished medical researcher. Both Frank and Stephen travelled extensively across China throughout their respective careers. In the 1980's, a student of my father's recalled him giving a lecture in Beijing which was so well-attended that audience members hung from window frames in order to be able to hear my father speak. In later life, my father made a stunning entrance onto Weibo, where he had highest number of sign ups recorded at the time, outdoing, to his delight, Tom Cruise! He chose to answer a question on Weibo, posed by a well wisher on his views about the famous butterfly connundrum attributed to Zhuangzi, another Daoist . My father replied:
'We must keep striving for an understanding of the fundamental questions of existence. And then perhaps we will know whether the butterfly - and the universe - are real or just in our dreams.'
I hope you enjoy this beautiful and thought provoking exhibition with its profound themes of time and space and that you while you absorb Wang Dongling's work, you are able to take a moment just to be.
MORE INFORMATIONS:
CAA Professor Wang Dongling Exhibition "Ink. Space. Time." inspired by Prof. Stephen Hawking Opens at the University of Cambridge
Gao Shiming: Chaos Script--The Dialectic Between Order and Chaos
May 31, 2023
