Body of Snow

Duration: August 5, 2023 From 1st to 9th September

Venue: Dongdong Hall  D10, 798 East Street, 798 Art District, No. 4, Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

In Zhang Wenqin's snow-themed paintings, two distinct series emerge: "Fruit Trees Covered in Snow'' and "Melting Snow." Each series serves a unique purpose – the former capturing the fleeting nature of objects, while the latter delves into surface phenomena, providing a glimpse into the underlying structures. His approach involves subtly portraying the activities of objects, shying away from overt displays and instead embracing hidden forms. The snow serves as a metaphor with dual symbolism, representing the ever-changing shapes and properties of objects, acting as carriers of meaning and emotions. This intermediate state of snow, characterized by its covering and melting, corresponds to the rhythm of life itself, while mirroring the inherent duality of objects and the boundaries of concealment and manifestation.
 

Snow, as the core motif of Wenqin's paintings, stems from his direct bodily experiences and serves as a doorway for his artistic engagement with reality. As he was born and raised in Dali, Yunnan, snowfall was a remarkable event worth recording. At that time, Wenqin had just started to dabble in painting and lacked the motivation and skill to depict it. It wasn't until he moved to Beijing to pursue his artistic career that he encountered snow again. The chilling northern wind, dry cold air, and thick snow altered the appearance of Beijing in a short period, resonating with a certain sensation in the artist's mind. The world was concealed by snow, allowing the painter to directly confront it, and it was then that he painted his first artwork with snow as the theme.

The thick layers of snow covering objects forms an undifferentiated body naturally, contrasting with the underlying elements. The shadows cast by the external light source on the snow further accentuate its corporeal existence. Initially, one might feel a surge of passion and intensity, yet Wenqin did not directly translate these emotions onto the canvas. Instead, he bestowed a sense of ritual and tenderness, as if those primal emotions would, like snow, adhere to the objects as the painting unfolds and gradually dissolve away. This approach to capturing emotions has been retained in subsequent creations.

From a painting perspective, snow is, first and foremost, a naturally abstract form that conceals details while presenting the overall outline. However, nothing can be entirely covered or hidden; the structure of things persistently reveals itself through the covering and melting of snow. The process of snow covering everything is akin to a brush carrying layers of paint, hinting at the simultaneous interplay of concealment and revelation. In Wenqin's paintings, snow is like flesh wrapped around a skeleton, metaphorically pointing to a quasi-representational body. Snow serves both as a covering, hinting at the fundamental structure of objects, and as an independent object of representation, manifesting its existence through coalescence and melting.
 

Wenqin's snow is not a neutral, pure white entity; rather, it encompasses various colors, veiling brilliance within plainness. On the other hand, the snow itself gradually acquires a versatile body. It can cling to objects, yet it can also take on an independent form and reveal its tenderness and romanticism through representation. It allows the structures of objects to manifest during covering and to be covered during manifestation. At this point, the imagery of snow becomes more like a hint for humanity.

The human body, actions, and emotions, all are metaphorically represented through snow. The gathering and forming of snow, though lacking individual faces, are threaded together by a common force, sharing a common destiny, much like the unified entity formed by countless people. Between the growth and falling of snow, the aging and melting, there lies a commonality between snow and the human body. It serves as a hidden expression for the painter, while representing an open collective empathy, naturally existing as countless paths of perception from us to snow, and from snow to us.

In 2019, Wenqin embarked on the creation of the "Fruit Trees Covered in Snow" series. The series originated from a dream where white snow fell on fruit trees, and the branches held a thick layer of snow, with red fruits adorning them, creating a fantastical and splendid scene. This dreamlike yet real-like image became the starting point, leading to a series of subsequent explorations.

Starting with the basic depiction, Wenqin underwent various transformative efforts: stripping away its inherent meaning and projection, and solely presenting it from a formal perspective. The snow formations under his brush took on diverse shapes as if possessing individual lives, evoking endless imaginings like mythical creatures. The boundary between the snow and the branches was gradually strengthened, allowing the paintings to move further towards two-dimension. Amidst the white snow, branches, leaves, and red fruits, an endless array of structures, relationships, and expressions emerges with complex emotions.

Through a seamless exploration of the painting's inherent logic, Wenqin infuses the snow-covered fruit trees with surreal meaning, accentuating the enigmatic nature of the scene. The snow itself becomes a subtle yet powerful indicator of the supporting fruit trees' internal structure, as it wraps around them and gradually assimilates them into its own form. He intriguingly refers to these transformed trees as "Snow Monsters." Starting from a foundation of mimicry, the snow in Wenqin's works takes on the appearance of a descending layer of skin, engulfing a part of the world into the captivating realm of the "Snow Monster." Within this transformation lies an array of subtle details, each serving as narrative enigmas with complex emotional properties.

These subtle details harmoniously converge to evoke a distinct sensation. In Fruit Trees Covered in Snow 23-8 (2023)the snow nearly engulfs a tree, transforming its branches into mesmerizing calligraphic lines, adorned with crimson fruits that allude to the existence of a snow-body. Beyond reality, a realm of surrealism slowly unfurls. The overall composition and intricate details of the painting seem to resonate with our cognition, prompting an automatic supplementation of thoughts and emotions, infusing life from within ourselves into the artwork. Nameless sensations, akin to snow monsters, unexpectedly materialize in reality. However, as we gaze upon this enigmatic creation, we find only a vague visage, purposefully depicted by Wenqin in the "Dancing Dragon" series.

The body of the snow monster is an undifferentiated body, where snow, as Gilles Deleuze put it, becomes a "body without organs" – freed from the established aesthetic norms, allowing it to regain the potential it had before. Therefore, in Wenqin's paintings, snow takes on a fluid and ever-changing posture, even appearing as a temporary presence, as if "without branches to rely on." These temporarily condensed forms not only embody the meaning and sensations that emanate from within but also capture the fleeting moments of the body of snow flowing freely. The snow falling on the fruit trees acquires numerous temporary identities with the aid of imagination, yet the white color permeating the painting reminds us of snow's material existence, grounding us "from illusion to reality."

For Wenqin, snow is not a preconceived meaning or goal; it is a raw material left for him to manipulate, to see what forms it will take. The process is naturally filled with contingencies and randomness, but ultimately, the aesthetics and interests stemming from the artist's bodily sensations take precedence, forming the temporary forms of the "snow monsters." Therefore, Wenqin's painting does not inherently carry meaning, as the artist's working method allows meaning to lag behind the canvas. As an ancient paradox goes, "I only know what I meant when I have said something."

Whether in the "Snow '' series or the "Dragon Dance '' series, Wenqin's choice of imagery is rooted in his body and experiences. From the childhood wonder of snow to the reunion with snow in his youth, and the deeply ingrained memories of the dragon dance performance since childhood, these have been latent motivations waiting to be expressed, determining the initial correspondence between words and things, images and meanings. The snow-covered buckets and fruit trees, and the people half-hidden under a black cloth, are both the voices of the body and the expressions of the painting itself. However, Wenqin has not chosen to fully embrace "automatic writing." Instead, he treats painting as a celebration of meaning with images, and symbols with expressions. Snow and the dragon dance are extracted and abstracted from everyday objects, transformed into poetic prose, a study of imitation and semblance.

These paintings evoke a sense of wonder and imagination. They don't seek to focus our attention on deciphering a specific meaning; instead, they aim to disperse it, allowing our attention to wander within the paintings, savoring the direction of each stroke or the charm of a particular snowflake's form, encountering the vague figures of the dragon dancers, and imagining the scenarios unfolding under the black cloth. This is an endless form of art, where the form, color, and rhythm of the snow are like the unpredictable gestures of a lover, ambiguous and mysterious. We stand in front of the canvas, longing for an explanation, but there is no external explanation. We can only understand and recreate the painting from within its own realm.

Therefore, viewers are not merely passive observers but actively engaged in the process of interpretation. While observing the artwork, we also undergo a process of reintegration and weaving of meaning, even attempting to emulate the original creative process. It is akin to Proust's dream of perfect writing - breaking down nouns into syllables, then recombining meaningless syllables into derivative relationships. Wenqin's paintings follow a similar path, where snow falls on objects, and black cloth covers the human body, all of which serve to cover and then dissolve existing meanings. The liberated elements then self-organize according to the internal logic of the painting, becoming a temporary expression of something else.
 

Therefore, when Wenqin identifies the "snow monsters" from the painting, this body of snow can only exist in a special realm that breaks free from external rules and is filled with perception, emotion, meaning, and intensity. With the participation of the viewer, the unstable state of the painting can change at any moment: as gravity prepares to pull the snow on the tree branches downward, the intervention of the body temporarily provides an upward counterforce, achieving a psychological balance in the composition. However, whether it's the artist or the viewer when faced with the artwork, one will discover that the self is continuously dissolving. It is only through this process of dissolution that meanings and emotions can continually renew in coalescence and dispersal. Only then can the body of snow truly possess its life and vitality.

About the artist

Zhang Wenqin, born in 1988 in Dali, Yunnan, graduated from Guangxi Art Institute and Central Academy of Fine Arts, now works and lives in Beijing.

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