Between the Extremes: The Paintings of Wan Yang
Text by Yang Zi
Color box
Wan Yang recently invented a new type of color box. The cross-section of the color box is neatly organized into a grid, resembling a stack of window screens. The "screen" grids accumulate to form deep holes for storing oil paints. Wan Yang longitudinally sliced the color box with curves, causing different sections of the holes to be segmented along these curves, with each segment being filled with different colors of paint. As the paint is extruded from the holes, it blends together. The design of the color box was completed using the graphical software ZBrush, and 3D printing technology brought it into physical existence. This series of works, which focuses on color, he calls the “Color" series.
Each hole on the color box corresponds to a grid of 2 to 5 centimeters on the painting. Wan Yang initially coats the canvas uniformly with gray acrylic, then produces the grids. The grids are created using white acrylic, snapped into place like a carpenter using a chalk line. The paintings themselves are made with oil paints. Wan Yang needs to begin the next grid before the paint of the previous one has dried. This is because, once oil paint mixes with oil and soaks into the canvas, it starts to interact with the air—evaporating, congealing, and drying to form a glossy surface layer. If the surface dries completely, adding new paint will result in a surface that lacks the original glossy texture. The painting process imposes a set of rules; once the work begins, it cannot be interrupted. During summer, he cycles to the subway daily, arriving at the studio at 7 a.m. and concluding at 11 p.m.; in winter, he works from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; in spring and autumn, the working hours adjust appropriately with the weather changes. This routine continued for over two years, with a brief respite only between the completion of one canvas and the start of another—an isolated and exhilarating cultivation.
"From Rainforest to Mars", installation view, AIKE, 2021
Wan Yang says that colors possess neither volume nor shape. [1] In his paintings, color is detached from physical substrates, settings, or narratives, dispensing with the illusion of depth. Complementary colors are frequently employed, generating tension between colors, as exemplified by the red and green in Water Lily (2012), and the yellow and purple in Dune (2020) and "Rainforest". In other works, the paintings exhibit only subtle gradations of color. In Ming Sweet-white (2020), faint hues of blue, green, and gray appear on a white base; as viewers instinctively attempt to discern the boundaries of these colors, they are repeatedly thwarted.
Rainforest, 2020, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm
Viewing the "Color" series paintings is akin to staring into a dense fog, where lights of various colors flicker deep within the mist. In his paintings, Wan Yang leaves spots or creates a textural layer of accumulated paint as seen in Coral (2020) to prevent viewers from losing their way. These accumulated paints or spots define another dimension of space, bringing them closer to the viewer’s eye. Thus, the paintings are divided into "near space" and "far space.” The "far space" resembles a magnified computer screen—a daily fixation for office workers—with image grids composed of miniature light bulbs, organized, dense, and uniformly flashing in pixels. Within and outside this pristine screen, there is no depth extension, no physical undulation. The spots or thickness in the "near space" [2] are akin to the dust on the eyeglasses of that office worker, sharing the same physical world with him. If this friend, immersed in desk work, could take a brief respite to consciously feel the moment his fingers wipe the glass surface, he might appreciate the texture of the dust particles, perhaps even sensing their temperature.
Huang Mountain, 2020, oil on cnavas, 200 x 150 cm
For Wan Yang, both the "near space" and "far space" are equally real and deserving of depiction. The "far space" reflects a contemporary visual mechanism characterized by the ubiquity of screens in both private and public spaces. In the "far space,” colors mysteriously transform into one another, diverging from the way colors change in the physical world, where they are influenced by light and shadow. Unlike the positional orientation of objects in the physical world, boundaries in the "far space" are ambiguous. In contrast to images on a screen which can be moved, on a static painting, each infinitesimal point of color is fixed; no actual "flow" occurs. Changes in paint color and perceived movement are both a phenomenon provoked by external movement of the gaze and a psychological effect produced by gestalt completion of consciousness. Initially, Wan Yang aimed to manually depict the "transformation" of colors, but this process did not meet his expectations. As the artist focused intently on a small area of the canvas, he often overlooked the structure of the entire composition—a situation he described as being overwhelmed by the "data" to the point of cognitive overload. To assist in managing this, he compared using a specially prepared "color box" to overtaking on a curve in racing. The color box serves to delineate the overall planning and the detailed painting steps. In creating a color box, he first prepares a detailed plan, followed by intuitively designing and allocating the proportions of paint to be used. Before finalizing the design of the color box, he typically engages in practice runs, creating smaller, proportionate versions of the color box to draft preliminary sketches before making adjustments. The work on the easel is predominantly led by hand in order to maximally enhance the layered complexity of the painting—each stroke striving for a unique coloration that the color box cannot replicate. Wan Yang simulates micro-images of screens in his mind, translating these impressions onto the canvas to achieve a viewing effect that feels more profound and disorienting than that of a screen.
"From Rainforest to Mars", installation view, AIKE, 2021“
Even though Wan Yang depicts objective colors devoid of emotional content, they inevitably engage in a subtle competition when positioned close to one another. Certain colors—such as yellow—display a strong covering power and dominate in mixtures, whereas blue tends to more easily conceal its nature. Wan Yang speculates that this might be due to the inherent structure of the human eye, which generates stronger neural impulses for the yellow spectrum than for blue. In his paintings, Wan Yang mediates this interplay between colors. Unlike Seurat's use of pure colors, Wan Yang's colors are pure only within a very limited scope; usually, a color seems to courteously interact with its surrounding hues before initiating its transformation. A color internally harbors the potential to transform into another, perpetually ready for this moment of change. This might explain why, in the "far space", a color can miraculously shift into another. The slow, almost uniform "flow" in the painting corresponds to the arrangement in the artist’s thought process.
"From Rainforest to Mars", installation view, AIKE, 2021
When painting spots, Wan Yang employs two methods. One is to splatter paint, allowing it to randomly land on the canvas, in stark contrast to his meticulously controlled “color box” method. The other method involves painting according to the pre-existing relationships among points on the canvas. For instance, the spots in Mars (2021) are inspired by the distribution of craters in Martian exploration images. The exhibition titled "From the Rainforest to Mars" suggests that Mars represents a culmination of creative methodology; indeed, it is one of the largest (200 x 300 cm) and most complete works featured in the exhibition. The upper left corner of the painting begins with a deep blue, gradually transitioning to a cloud-like white zone, enveloped by soft pink, gray, green, and purple hues that convey the ethereal volume of clouds. A dark streak runs from the lower-left corner through the clouds, drawing them towards a flesh-like orange-red. This orange-red marks the conclusion of the painting. Teal, resembling veins under the skin, intermittently appears, resonating with the blue at the other end of the cloud. The "near-end" spots emerge with their own logic, independent of the drastic changes in the "far-end" colors. Mars was the final painting completed for the exhibition. In the final phase of the exhibition's creation, Wan Yang relinquished the last bits of randomness remaining in his artistic process.
Mars, 2021, oil on canvas, 300 x 200 cm
Viewing Wan Yang's paintings challenges the customary practices of art spectators. They find no focal point in the artist's tactile sense or skill, nor in the control over the painting's structure; moreover, purely abstract paintings also eschew narratives that could provide fodder for discussion—such as responses to reality. Typically, seasoned viewers, confident in their experience, automatically generate a robust language of critique based on familiar "handles"; complementarily, practitioners steeped in experience develop certain operational systems. Before the arrival of new and exhilarating trends, they tend to feel that art which conforms to these systematic rules is “good,” while that which does not conform is “bad.” Following these unavoidable habits, once they begin painting, the brush in their hand unconsciously moves according to the “good” defined in their minds, steering clear of the “bad.” The highly abstracted visual language that can be employed to adjudicate "good" and "bad" may be termed as a "linguistic formula." This "linguistic formula" necessitates a broad base of "common sense"—collectively normative visual experiences—to facilitate communication among viewers who are "confident in their experience." From within the domain of painting, the brush can either reach towards the tangible, external realities, or extend through "common sense" towards a highly abstracted, easily reproduced "linguistic formula." In the contemporary art world, the former approach has gradually ceased to be a topic of discussion among artists, whereas the latter, due to its innocuous subject matter and aesthetically pleasing form, has transformed into a readily tradable commodity.
"From Rainforest to Mars", installation view, AIKE, 2021
Wan Yang’s paintings endeavor to penetrate a realm that is distinct both from photographic-like realism and from the "linguistic formula." On one hand, he draws inspiration from the ubiquitous screen viewing experiences of today, because such experiences are not burdened by the "linguistic formula." On the other hand, Wan Yang's paintings are not hyperrealistic enlargements from screens. The transformation of colors is an experiment in Wan Yang’s mind—within an infinitely flat, boundaryless, and depthless expanse, a color silently undergoes a transformation. His paintings vigorously simulate this process.
Today, we dwell within a narrative that adeptly balances national power and market dynamism, a narrative that continues to flourish compellingly. This very narrative provides artists with abundant material, immensely potent, to the extent that any so-called "abstract" painting (or paintings that establish themselves through the "formalism of language") or "figurative" painting (generally referring to paintings that take life studies as their subject) and the art historical significance they carry, can be compressed and swallowed by this compelling story, quickly consumed as easily recognizable, comprehensible common knowledge. Perhaps as a means to elude this, Wan Yang entrusts the colors in his mind to the viewers, allowing the colors to be re-enacted in their minds, leaving an impression, which then fades away without any burden. In the act of evasion, the artist also emphasizes the subject's self-awareness.
[1] Derived from a conversation with Wan Yang on WeChat, 4 June 2021.
[2] The term "proximal" does not refer to a physical closeness of these speckles to the observer. On the contrary, Wan Yang first splashes these speckles, then overlays them with paint from his palette. The "proximal" in "proximal" pertains more to a descriptive convenience meant to elaborate the psychological distance produced in the viewer’s mind as they observe the paintings.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
