Out of the Blue: A Calligraphic Journey through Alcantara
ALCANTARA 从天而降：书法之旅
Qin Feng | Qu Lei Lei | Sun Xun | Mao Lizi | Zhang Chun Hong | Wang Huangsheng
Palazzo Reale, Milano
9 Sept - 11 Oct 2020
About
Calligraphy is one of the most venerated art forms in Chinese culture. In the digital age of advanced technological reproduction, how can this traditional art still flourish as a contemporary vehicle for knowledge, connecting an ancient past with contemporary philosophical enquiry?
In Out of the Blue six renowned Chinese artists investigate this question by offering transversal responses through works that fuse classicism with contemporaneity. Employing Alcantara as a common denominator, the artists explore the versatility of this avant-garde medium in creating works imbued with personal and collective memories. Merging ancient practices with a medium of the future, the thousand-year-old Chinese cultural heritage comes to the fore by acquiring new expressive potentialities.
The Apartment of the Princes at Palazzo Reale is transformed into vibrant experiences where site-specific installations respond to the aesthetics of the rooms by playing on visual affinities and contrasts. Ranging from digital projections to forests of ink on hanging scrolls, the artists draw on the roots of Chinese calligraphic practice to raise questions about the nature of humanity’s relation with the world through Daoist notions of temporality, life-force and participation.
On entering the first room, the viewer walks into an immersive forest of ideograms where calligraphic strokes unfurl smoothly along vertical scrolls. Qu Lei Lei expands on and re-interprets the idea of this ancient practice of calligraphy as a multiplicity of forms evoking the proliferation of the fragmented information surrounding us in contemporary life.
In the second room, Zhang Chun Hong presents a hybridisation that skilfully blends human and natural elements. Using her leitmotif of flowing hair, finely drawn in thin, silken strands following the gongbi (工笔) style, the artist expresses the concept of life-force through a sculptural work in which nature, body and calligraphy merge.
What we see in the work of Qin Feng are not sketches of an emerging idea as a consummate form, but rather immediate forms of the idea itself. There is no distance between the thought and the primal gesture; the spontaneity of the calligraphic movement exudes a primordial energy, embodying the Daoist principle of wu wei (无为) that is ‘action in non-action’.
In Mao Lizi’s screens vibrant splashes of colour are presented on panels, creating a strong visual rhythm within the zigzag form. According to Daoist philosophy, history does not follow a linear process; it is not a vector but develops according to the concept of synchronicity. The artist’s response to the horizontal line of thought about time is to follow a vertical line, considering phenomena that coexist simultaneously.
In the digital installation by Wang Huangsheng, the eye is drawn upwards, as the continuous movement of words and characters lights up the ceiling, opening up glimpses of passing thoughts and reflections in mesmerising form. The activation of shadows and light, together with long narrow scrolls of densely written lines, creates an immersive visual experience, leading the public to spontaneously engage with the work, in turn disorienting and reorienting the gaze through light and movement.
The final exhibit is composed of an immersive video projection and a long scroll painted by Sun Xun. Here the artist draws inspiration from the rhythm of ancient calligraphic practice to create contemporary animations permeated by symbolic elements. A surreal world of mythological creatures and mysterious landscapes suddenly opens up before the viewer, whose presence becomes an integral part of the artwork, generating a participative dimension.
Out of the Blue takes the visitor on a calligraphic journey through Alcantara, an optimal medium for the creation of innovative hybridisations of art. Merging ancient Eastern traditions with artistic experimentations of the twenty-first century, each room offers heterogeneous interpretations from contemporary China, evoking the distant past, the unknown future and the relevance of both to the freshness of the present moment.
The exhibition is co-curated by Katie Hill, Office of Contemporary Chinese Art.
Selected Images
Palazzo Reale, Milan.
Palazzo Reale, Milan.
Entrance of the Apartment of the Princes, Palazzo Reale, Milan. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Mao Lizi, Passages.
Mao Lizi, Passages.
Mao Lizi, Passages. Courtesy of Palazzo Reale, Milan.
Mao Lizi, Passages.
Qu Leilei, Fragments. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Qu Leilei, Fragments. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Zhang Chun Hong, Fall. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Zhang Chun Hong, Fall. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Qin Feng, Infinity of Temples. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Qin Feng, Infinity of Temples. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Qin Feng, Infinity of Temples. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Qin Feng, Infinity of Temples.
Wang Huangsheng, In Between. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Wang Huangsheng, In Between. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Wang Huangsheng, In Between. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Sun Xun, Space-Time Fissure. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Sun Xun, Space-Time Fissure. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Sun Xun, Space-Time Fissure. Courtesy of Palazzo Reale, Milan.
Installation view, Out of the Blue: A Calligraphic Journey through Alcantara. Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.
Courtesy of Alcantara S.p.A.