May. 31- Aug. 24, 2008

WANG Wusheng and His Photography
of Yellow Mountain

Contemporary artist WANG Wusheng first photographed Yellow Mountain in 1974, towards the end of the Cultural Revolution in China. Each time he returned to the area over the following decades, WANG experienced the same powerful feeling of his soul being purified and of the peaks telling him that Yellow Mountain is the origin of his art and the purpose of his life.

Fascinated by the visual contrast of the white clouds and dark mountains, WANG chose to work primarily in black –and-white photography, which conveys the rich tonal variations of Chinese ink paintings, Wang also adheres to two of the Six principles on Art advocated by the fifth-century painter and theorist Xie He: the first being “spirit resonance” (qiyun shengdong), and the fifth one of “plan and design, place and position” (jingying weizhi). Wang often adds a signature and seal to his “landscape photographs” just as the ancient masters did. All this, he believes, forms a bridge between his contemporary photography and traditional Chinese aesthetics.

WANG Wusheng was born in Wuhu, Anhui province, in 1945. After spending more than twenty years in Japan, he recently opened a photography studio in Shanghai. His works have been exhibited throughout Asia and Europe since the late 1980s, and they were on view in the United Nations headquarters in New York in 2005. This selection of twelve photographs, ranging in date from 1979 to 2004, serves as a perfect introduction to the ever—changing landscape of Yellow Mountain.