Huang Yan = Variable Art + Smeared Ink + Ink Rubbing + Acting Force

At the end of 20th century and the beginning of 21st century, Huang Yan took part in some events and combined several art fields. He also became a pioneer in many fields, such as conceptual photography, interactive art, performance art, oil painting, sculpture, documentary, devices, etc. As a leading figure of artists of New Beijing School, Huang Yan learned traditional landscape painting from Wang Huai, an artist in Changchun in 1978. From 1979 to 1981, he studied works by The Four Wangs (four Chinese landscape painters in the 17th century, all surnamed Wang and best known for their accomplishments in Shan Shui painting) and by famous artists during the Culture Revolution including Qian Songyan and Song Wenzhi. Huang Yan made a batch of shan shui ink paintings by ink rubbings in 1981, and participated in the 85 New Tide Art Movement under the gradual influence of the modern thought in the west. At the same time, a new imaging system of block print, i.e., mud block print was invented, which was an important event in art field in Changchun. It turned the direction of the development Chinese art based on the Enlightenment in late 17th-century Europe. It was the earliest work of Chinese post-literati art and an artistic innovation like a milestone. Please remember those artists in the art movement of new block print: Wang Changbai, Huang Yan, Lu Ming, Guan Dawo, Wang Li, Zhu Fang, Zhang Xizhong and Zhao Bo. The most typical method of the new block print was to rub oil or water over a piece of paper that was put over a mud block. It was a new technic in the Chinese painting. Its academic mark was the Block Image Exhibition in the art gallery of Northeast normal university. In the exhibition, Huang Yan led a blind person into the exhibition room, which met the expectation of Chinese pioneering artists in the 1980s towards the western post-modernism art. The exhibition involved linguistics, semiology, anthropology, daily life, earth art, behavior, concepts, space, integral art, cities and naming. The exhibition demonstrated some new direction for Chinese painting and Chinese new art movement. It showed the fruit of how Chinese art combined American industry art. In the 1990s, Huang Yan created mail art all by himself in Changchun. By making rubbings of objects and sending mails, he studied the social change in Changchun systematically. The radius of Changchun became a geographic concept of Huang Yan’s conceptual art and interactive art. It was the first time that an artistic research was systematically conducted on a city in the name of art since reform and openness. Huang’s mail art was neither the western mail art nor general conceptual art, but a mixture of localized Chinese art. His two works involved every aspect of the society such as social events, news, notes, jobs, life, gender, etc. During the same period, Huang Yan planed China’s first new media art event, “0431.1998 Video and Computer Art Exhibition”, in Changchun University of Technology in October 1998, which initiated the new media art in China. In 2000, Huang Yan went to Beijing and settled in the Shangri-La Art Commune, the first art district transformed from factories in China. Then he moved to 798 Art District and Songzhuang Art District.

He set up Masidebi Art Center, a non-profit art organization in 798 Art District, and held a series of art events and exhibitions on urban subculture, including Exhibition on the Only Child, Graffiti Art Week, Chinese Cartoon Art and A Ton of Poem by Su Feishu. In October 2000, Huang Yan organized Third Gender Art Exhibition in Beida Online which was the first art exhibition on network interaction in China. In 2004, he planed @ Vehicle Art Activity in the Grassland Art District, and held events like “Extreme Handwriting” in Huantie Asia Art Commune.

After 2000, Huang Yan’s paintings were presented in many large-scale international exhibitions about China. The most famous one of those works was the Shan Shui painting on human body. It was the first time that the subject of human was combined with Chinese art which emphasized that man was an integral part of nature in the ancient times. Huang Yan mixed the subject and the object in the painting, and amended the industry art. He initiated this work since 1994 by painting landscape on his face.

In 2008, Huang Yan focused on the painting and handwriting systems, started using semiology to present western modern art, and completed series of traditional Chinese painting research and series of fingerprint. He disassembled the traditional Chinese paintings into spots and lines, and painted plum blossoms, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum with random lines and spots (fingerprints). In this way, the details of traditional figure painting, landscape painting and bird-and- flower painting became conceptual. In the First Linzhou Biennial Exhibition of Ink Painting in 2009, Linzhou, Huang Yan proposed the concept of “post-literati art”. The exhibition demonstrated the academic roadmap of modern ink painting for three decades in China. Since 2010, Huang Yan conducted many public experiments in the ten ink painting art exhibitions held in Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. He regarded the influence on paintings by temperature and humidity as key factors, and considered strength, weight and other elements neglected by the western artists as important methods to affect artworks. This could be regarded as the beginning of “quantity art” and “variable art”. Then in Shanghai 800 Gallery and Shanghai Museum of Ink Painting Art, Huang Yan, Hu Youben, Shao Yan, Zhang Zhaohui, Cheng Puyun, Ren Zhitian, Zhang Tiemei, Da Xiang And Han Weihua did a series of experiments on ink painting art. Those experiments involved plenty of articles for daily use including food and building materials. They recorded the production and presentation of artworks by measurement. The natural light, wind and rain were directly used to demonstrate artworks. This method was extensively used in the International Biennial Exhibition of Ink Painting Art, such as Huang Yan’s artworks by smearing ink with abrasive paper and artworks with insolated rice papers. Artworks of “variable art” were entirely displayed in the exhibition which was an example of the combination of Chinese art, Hard Edge and industry art in the west. In December 2012, Huang Yan produced artworks by smearing ink with abrasive paper and artworks with insolated rice papers in Deyijia Artistic Life Space as well. He kept emphasizing artworks’ variability at different times and under different strengths. For instance, characters written on a LEO GALLERY Shanghai | 376 Wukang Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China | +86-21 54658785 | [email protected] LEO GALLERY Hong Kong | 189 Queen’s Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong | +852 2803 2333 | [email protected] All rights reserved by Leo Gallery International Ltd.

rubber band would be distorted into different sizes depending on the stretching force. It directly involved the handwriting and science. Even the daily food Huang Yan had in Deyijia Artistic Life Space was regarded as a factor that influenced his work. This artistic variable in daily life was a specific case showing the mixture of Chinese and western art. In the Second Linzhou Biennial Exhibition of Ink Painting in April 2012, Linzhou, Huang Yan raised the concept of “landscape ink painting” which was the development of variable art on the borrowed scene of artists in ancient China. He put Chinese ink painting art in the larger field of landscape art, and created another pattern of art with Chinese ink besides Chinese calligraphy. It originated from the traditional art and created a new art filed. Huang Yan made a breakthrough on the interior art structure of the nature and cities in his experiments on contemporary ink painting. In Deyijia Artistic Life Space, he shifted his focus to the new ink painting, and new urban life style based on city household. He hid mountain forests in the city and created a view beyond the traditional art.

Huang Yan summarized that his variable art had three milestones: “body ink painting”, “zipper painting” and “rubber band shan shui painting”. They were examples of the methodology of “post- literati art”, “personal customized art” and “personal consumption art”. In 1995 Huang Yan created a zipper shan shui painting, a traditional landscape painting on canvas that could be rolled up. This work was revolutionary because its subject was not the painting itself, but the presentation method.By the form of a handscroll, the painting could be revealed and concealed. It was a typically Chinese style but Huang Yan applied the skills of American Hard Edge art to present it. In the back ground which was completely dark, he hid the Chinese landscape painting or handwriting which had abundant content with a zipper. A still image became active. The meaning of this painting was neither its features on two or three dimension, nor Huang’s philosophy background with both Chinese and western aesthetics, but the subject of art which was shifted from the painter to the viewer.In the painting, Huang Yan was a director while each viewer was the actor. His or her observation was part of the work. The audience was not watching passively because their observation was the essence of the work. In the information era, Huang Yan outperformed American Hard Edge art in the most primitive way. From body ink painting in 1994, zipper landscape painting in 1995, to rubber band ink painting, he completed the art aesthetics of New Beijing School Art. Body ink painting provided a new method of reproducing the subject and object. Zipper landscape painting changed the subject of art, and indicated a new possibility of consumption art after Andy Warhol. Rubber band ink painting went back to art’s original subject, but the flexibility of rubber band made the size and content of the painting variable. By changing its size, an artwork could produce different views. It also provided a direction to the breakthrough of western graphic arts after Lucio Fontana. These cases were the experiment results in which Huang Yan applied his post-literati art theory. He made a breakthrough with easel painting materials when

the world was dominated by the internet. These works were also his experiment of his miniature art and quantity art.

Huang Yan 2014 February