With ZHANG WENHAI
ZHANG WENHAI CHALLENGE
“In Europe, I learned the beauty of the Unfinished”
Originally from northern China, but born in Shanghai because his parents worked there, the painter Zhang Wenhai spent as much time in China as in Belgium, which is to say if he knows the artistic questions that drive two countries. His unique approach borrows from these two cultures their own beauty. This fine technician trained in printmaking at home is also a thinker of his art dedicated to a practice of the borders between “abstract and figurative”, two Western concepts that the Chinese understand in their own way, a way that is likely to positively upset our European categories !
LHCH had the chance to visit the new studio-gallery of the Chinese artist in Brussels. Interview here in full.
LHCH: What was your training in China, first of all?
ZHANG WENHAI: I had already started this apprenticeship in artistic high school. The lessons were half of practical work. There I learned Western-style academic techniques such as classical drawing, still lifes, watercolor, oil painting, and sculpture.
LHCH: Training completed in Europe.
ZHANG: The paradox is that when you arrive in Europe, you are asked to forget all the technique you learned in China and “let your imagination run wild.” It’s very difficult at first. You have to adapt. The teacher is only there to provide a “thought solution”, a creative angle. And this, from the first years of application! So I was surrounded by students lacking in technique and solid artistic foundations who already wanted to start creating their work! In China, it is the reverse order. I arrived with the ability to draw shapes and bodies in an artistic and rigorous way. Here I have the impression that the students thought I was coming out of a “cage”, that I was too trained. Painful as an experience.
LHCH: But to learn Chinese art as such, how does it work? At what level of study?
ZHANG: After high school. At university or academy. Personally, I did 2 out of 4 years at the Shanghai Academy and then I came to Belgium at the invitation of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. But in China, before I got professional status, I taught calligraphy and Chinese painting for children.
LHCH: In what year did you arrive in Belgium? Was it easy to get a visa?
ZHANG: Very early 1999. No. It was necessary to manage equivalences and communication between the two academies. Also, I needed someone to take care of my finances here. I was 19. Without a Luxembourgish friend of my father’s, nothing would have been possible. Finally, I was asked to do a year of French before starting artistic classes.
LHCH: You were talking about a China still a little locked in academism, but in the 90s, during your teenage years, there was already the wave of giant artists like Yue Minjun who revolutionized contemporary art even on a global level. ! And very soon there was the artistic industrial zone of 798 in Beijing.
ZHANG: There was no internet back then. This novelty had not really circulated in our huge country at that time. Moreover, the concept of contemporary art is primarily Western. You started early. You quote Yue Minjun, but it was still figurative, or rather “cynical realism”. Has China already really entered its own revolutionary phase of contemporary art? What would truly Chinese contemporary art be? In the 80s and 90s reference was made to Mao’s little Red Book or the Cultural Revolution. But isn’t this a comparison game with Europe? A Western system filled only with Chinese folk notes …
LHCH: These artists have not yet taken the step to go to Europe. They stayed in Beijing.
ZHANG: Exactly. Apart from Ai Wei Wei or especially Zao Fou Ki, who really came to settle in France, our artists have little knowledge of Europe. They copied a structure and filled it with their culture. But without deep thought. Here I have learned to understand why you often reject technique for freedom and abstraction.
LHCH: And why do you think?
ZHANG: Multiple revolutions since the beginning of the 20th century. But in my opinion this way of rejecting representation is exaggerated.
LHCH: For example?
ZHANG: We have another relationship to the outside world. We must know in China how to express things that we have experienced … Here, the young students are only in reflection. But after brilliant experiments at the academy, when they graduate, what is left? What will they do concretely in their work as an artist if they only have co
concepts in mind? How to materialize these ideas? No, really their real freedom would be to have access to artistic techniques. To be free is to behave yourself where you want to go. Self-discipline. You have to know some means of expression first and then select them and forget about others.
LHCH: Are you talking about the maturation of an artist?
ZHANG: Yes, I call it “fermentation”. There are things that lie within us and that develop. Others disappear over time. But you need a raw material for that.
SUBLIMATED ENGRAVING AND MAROUFLAGE
LHCH: Or digestion? And more specifically what did you learn here? I had seen your study work in 2008.
ZHANG: There are compulsory mixed media courses following the terms. I particularly like the metal worked with a chisel, in the Italian manner of the 13th century before the techniques of etching. It takes a year to learn to draw a straight line. And one more year to draw a curved line! On the banknotes the designs were done in this way. Today, no one uses a chisel except in jewelry stores. I like the result of this type of engraving. Fine and regular.
LHCH: And you continued?
ZHANG: No, not really. But it taught me a lot. In undergrad, I also learned the technique of masking (from China) which I adopted. The idea is to protect fragile paper like that of calligraphy. I had the idea of combining engraving with masking. You can print several sheets, transparent, with the engraving. So these sheets with contemporary abstract patterns etched, I maroufled them on Chinese paper, often on rolls. We can see the two types of superimposed papers. This is my 1st technique for which I received an award abroad!
LHCH: When I see your current more abstract work, I tell myself that like other Chinese artists your vision is still quite figurative.
ZHANG: A task, is it real? What if we make it bigger? Doesn’t it become abstract? And a knot in a tree in close-up? Exciting questions.
LHCH: How did you go from this technique of 2009 to the paintings today?
ZHANG: There is a continuity because the colors of my paintings do not come from me but from the papers precisely. So there is still this idea of paper and texture. Today I’m layering the textures. But I change the glues. With plant or animal origins. Then I can mix the ink with the glue and create more authentic textures.
LHCH: Your new canvas is acrylic with indeed a thicker paper overlay.
ZHANG: This canvas (pictured here) looks abstract but I worked on the shadows to make them stand out with charcoal. These are techniques of figurative art.
LHCH: You seem to put a lot of importance on thinking.
ZHANG: A painting shouldn’t be done in reflection. But yes, in general I think a lot about my artistic means.
LHCH: How do you define yourself between Europe and China?
ZHANG: Complex question! Because this year, I spent 19 years in China and I have been in Europe for 19 years! However, I never let go of my Chinese roots. I eat Chinese; I teach Chinese painting; my books are chinese etc. But indeed, there are things that I can only experience and learn here. Identity each builds it in their own way, between different worlds at the same time.
LHCH: An example of what Europe has taught you.
ZHANG: Beauty doesn’t have to be especially beautiful. Also the idea that a painting can be “unfinished”.
LHCH: If I could attempt to summarize your journey so far, I would say that after working the actual material of the metal with the engraving, then printed on Chinese paper and mounted; Today, do you work directly with the material on paper using different inks, glues and papers?
ZHANG: The texture is figurative even if treated abstractly. I want to find the rule of a technique for returning value to the figurative unknown, therefore of something that cannot easily be imagined! The figuration of a not already figured!
The pure abstract does not exist. It always comes from an experience of nature, but enlarged or miniaturized until it becomes unknown.
LHCH: One thing China could bring to European art?
ZHANG: An idea of the necessity of life and its rules. The idea of complying wisely
LHCH: Thank you for those constructive thoughts and Merry Christmas to you.
