Ink on Xuan paper
Mind Set Art Center is honored to launch Wu Yiming: Being and Nothingness, the latest solo exhibition of Wu Yiming. This is Wu’s third appearance at the gallery and he is set to unveil the new paintings he’s produced since moving to New York. The exhibit consists of more than 30 of Wu’s ink brush paintings, the subject of which include outdoor landscape, interiors views and plants. Together, the works outlines the artist’s evolution in his creative process. The show is set to run from 16 November through 25, December, 2024. An opening reception is held at 3:00 p.m. on opening day. We cordially extend an invitation to you.
Wu Yiming received thorough training in Chinese ink brush painting in college. Despite his immersion in traditions, Wu often challenges conventions and paint flowers, potted plants, interiors and exterior landscapes, subjects from his surroundings and personal experience. These subjects are rooted in the time that Wu lives in, and they represent his breakthrough in this millennium-old medium. The title of his latest solo show “Being and Nothingness” is inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism. It is also the artist’s response to the destabilized world and an expression of his complex feelings while living in New York. Is the world today authentic or absurd? Are his personal life and creative journey real or nihilist? These thoughts have all seeped into Wu’s recent works.
Wu currently lives in New York and the immersion in a foreign culture has helped elevate the painterly and dynamic qualities in his paintings. In a new series of chandelier paintings, he challenges conventions of light and shadows and instead develop his ink as colors and extend his lines in like those in sketches. He manages to conduct a dialogue among the negative spaces, the multi-layered ink and the unbridled lines and braze a new trail for the aesthetics of ink brush painting. In his 2020 painting Wet, Glistening Road Surface 1, Wu Yiming applies techniques in both ink brush and sketching on the skeletal structure of the chandelier. He also uses the negative space to accentuate the textures and lines in the frame. The combination also conveys the liveliness of the dialogue between ink and paper, as well as the intertwined connection between the real and the illusory ---- a uniquely eastern philosophy. Wu often paints on both sides of the rice paper in order to achieve a higher degree of variation in ink texture. Through his fine-tuning of the layers and gradation of ink, Wu creates a different kind of painterly quality in his ink brush works. His implementation of light and shadows also imbues his paintings with qualities akin to that of photography. In another new series, More Than Meets the Eye, Wu attempts to add calligraphy strokes among the fallen leaves to create a whole new relationship and to overturn the tradition in ink brush painting where the words and the subjects are separate. As a result, Wu has managed to create a whole new visual style and a new type of relations between the elements in his frame.
