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Reinventing the Shanghai poster-girl of the 1930s, Tang’s latest paintings mark a radical departure from her earlier, more decorative work, replacing sumptuous pattern-making with flat planes of colour, often in brilliantly contrasting hues, and a new psychological intensity in the portraiture. Generically, these canvasses could be described as “female beauties”, a traditional category of Chinese painting celebrating feminine beauty and sexual allure. But there is also a certain wistfulness to these portraits, a reflective quality, even a hint of melancholy, which adds depth and nuance to these studies of Chinese womanhood. Singapore, 21 January 2010 -- Tang Xuezhen's Solo Exhibition - "Blossom" Title: "Blossom" Date & Time: 28th January 2010 to 10th February 2010 (11am - 6pm) Venue: Y2ARTS Showroom (140 Hill Street, #01-02, MICA Building, Singapore 179369) New paintings by Tang Xuezhen mark a radical departure from her earlier work. Where previously her canvasses were a colourful study in pattern-making, her new work is bold and forthright, entailing a dramatic juxtaposition of brilliantly contrasting hues. Those earlier paintings from five or six years ago were like an Orientalist’s version of Matisse or Raoul Dufy, filled to the brim with flowers and textiles, Chinese furniture and porcelain, which together created a sumptuous array of colours and patterns, wherein lay their charm. But the figures in those paintings — young women drinking tea, attending to their toilet, sitting in a garden — were little more than an excuse for more pattern-making, a tailor’s dummy on which to drape a gorgeous cheong-sam. Their presence was slight, their intention simply to delight and to please in the tradition of a pipa tsai or ‘sing-song’ girl in a Chinese teahouse. But all this has changed in Xuezhen’s new work; the Chinoiserie has been put away and it is the women who come to the fore. There is still the evocation of old Shanghai, a sense of recherché du temps perdu, but the interest very clearly lies in the women rather the setting; there is a new psychological depth to these paintings that previously was not there. As if to emphasise this shift in focus, the background has now been stripped of all ornament, comprising instead flat planes of pure colour — orange, purple, blue — against which the girls are set like models in a photographer’s gallery. Gone too are the brightly-patterned cheong-sams; the women are still dressed in the modeng or ‘modern’ style of 1930s Shanghai, but the fabrics now are plain, though no less brilliantly-coloured, presenting striking chromatic contrasts with the background — blue on red, orange on purple. This new and dramatic use of colour in Xuezhen’s paintings is arresting, but ultimately it is the girls themselves who take centre stage and who seek our appraisal. Their identity may be unknown, their time and place elsewhere, but we feel that we might have known them long ago and far away. Generically, these canvasses could be described as “female beauties”, a traditional category of Chinese painting celebrating feminine beauty and sexual allure. But there is also a certain wistfulness to these portraits, a reflective quality, even a hint of melancholy, which adds depth and nuance to these studies of Chinese womanhood. Perhaps they are dreaming of absent lover or an unrequited romance — there is a back-story to these painting that we can only guess at but which returns to haunt us all the same. “The sky is so high; the road is long, long! … And your dream, like mine, cannot pass over the mountains and rivers!” The words are Li Po’s, but one hears them whispered on the moist lips of these lovely maidens whose thoughts are with a loved one far away. These are truly stunning new paintings by Tang Xuezhen, their psychological depth and accompanying resonances evidence of a growing maturity in her work which makes one look forward in excited anticipation to see where these advances will take her next. Media Contacts: Tel: + (65) 6336 8683 Email: Submitted by Y2ARTS, Y2ARTS Pte Ltd on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 12:20 PM Category: Arts & Entertainment |
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