WANG KEPING BIRDS - Harmony of the Forest

“ Where does my inspiration to make birds come from?

The trees? The sky? The earth? Or dreams?

Although their forms are simple, they are full of spirit.

My Birds are not in fact birds, they are sculpted from wood, embodying the forms of branches and touches of humanity.

Does one discern qualities of the wood from observing humanity, or does one discern humanity from observing the wood?

What is absolute can also be nothing; what appears to exist can be nonexistent; what appears to be a bird might not be a bird.

What looks soft with your eyes is, in fact, hard by a touch.

It is what appears to be familiar, that is perhaps, what makes everyone happy. �

- Wang Keping

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我的鸟从哪里来？从树上，从天上，从人间，从梦里…… 简单的形式，丰富的情态。 我的鸟，不是鸟，是木头，是雕刻，有树枝的形式，有人性的感觉。 是人性的木头，还是木头的人性？ 似有似无，似象非象，似鸟非鸟。 看起来软，摸起来硬，似曾相识，皆大欢喜

王克平

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Birds - Harmony of the Forest

by Katie de Tilly

The artist Wang Keping putters through his large garden arranging the chunks of wood around him. The spring has brought flowers to the trees, an explosion of pink and white blossoms drape his work area. The renewal of life is all around as the artist too reemerges after a long winter back to his worktable. The songs of the morning birds are abound and it is in this quiet pace that the artist begins his day. For Wang Keping the essence or life of any of his works lives within the wood itself. The ideas spark after long observation of the knots and branches to what lies within. He started to carve his first wood sculptures 40 years ago when he was a rambunctious youth in China fighting with his comrades for the right and freedom of showing the art of his time. Today, he is a master, a sage, a philosopher and all that he needs is in his garden with him. He says little, nature speaks, he listens and then creates. The English poet, John Keats wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all you know on earth, and all you need to know.1 “ These are the words I think about when observing Wang Keping’s relationship to his art. His search comes deep from within him, which leads to his unique sculptural language that is driven by his truth. For him, when he sculpts a woman or a bird, the abstract takes over and what is left is the primal, creatural, birth of his sculptures that speak volumes through the wood’s flowing grains, its beastly knots or its sinuous fluidity. He cares little of what other artists are doing and what are the trends within sculpture and contemporary art and remains resolute that his work represents a unique voice in sculpture.

Wang Keping’s Birds are one of his main themes, along with women, men, mother holding child, couples and abstract works he terms “ex-voto.” Ever present around him in his atelier he observes the birds as the harmony of the forest but he observes them in relation to the trees and their branches that also resemble the figure of a bird. Like all of his works the object he sculpts is less important than the form that emerges from it.

The subject is an excuse to get to the essence of what truth and beauty he is looking for 5

inside the block of wood. The final image is an abstraction of the idea. And through the process, all the natural elements of the wood become important. The natural knot might be in the middle, and the artist will cut a curve into the work around it incorporating the swirl of a beak. The grain might allow the flowing of the neck or even create a pattern that resembles feathers. The cracks might create an even blanket on the work that etch a circular pattern. The wood might be a flowing river of natural bumps and contours; he appreciates their ability to add certain feelings and textures to the piece and he consciously incorporates them into the sculpture itself. All of these refined aspects of the wood are thought about and employed. He knows all the intricacies of the different trees he works with and the characteristics they will give. Ash wood has a beautiful and prominent grain; maple tends to show little grain yet can be dense like stone but shows tones of honey coloring. Yew is a hard and knotty bush that contains numerous bumps and protrusions that he allows his hand to go around rather than fight through its toughness. “Some parts are soft,” he explains, “others hard, I let the wood guide me.”

The feeling is always there, he knows where to go. He explains, “Each piece of wood will give something different.” He might have ten pieces of cedar wood or yew wood but they will not give the same outcome. “Each tree is unique, having grown under different conditions thus the wood from each tree even if they are the same will be different,” he explains. It is this understanding that allows such a personal conception and perception of each piece he sculpts. Around his studio, he shows me a bird sculpture in process. The work is covered with a plastic bag. “I want to control the speed in which the work dries so the cracks will be more even.” Large blocks of wood will take several years to dry, smaller chunks maybe two years, thus from the beginning, it is a minimum of two to three years before it is finished. He is patient and a perfectionist. So many of his works are lost to the crack being too large while they dry causing the wood to split in two. A sculpture might already be half finished but will be discarded if the crack becomes comprising.

His mastery is part able to find the ways to release the pressure by creating a cut in the work or by creating certain conditions for the wood to dry at the right pace. Nature will ultimately decide who wins.

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Wang Keping was an errant young man whose works in the late 1970s were so scandalous in the tightly controlled China of his time that he was written up in both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in 1979 and 1980. Fox Butterfield, the first foreign journalist allowed into China during the post Mao era, wrote a chapter about Wang Keping in his book, China, Alive in the Bitter Sea. It should also be noted that Wang insisted that Mr. Butterfield use his name where the other chapters about Chinese citizens were named with pseudonyms. He was a defiant young man, so much so, that he even went as far as to make the untouchable Chairman Mao Zedong into a Buddha figure, naming the work “Idol,” to emphasize the analogy that one must never question a God. This work and others he made at the time were some of the first artworks that actually spoke out against the Chinese government, a shocking and dangerous stance in this era. Yet “truth” has always been the driving force of his work. As a brave young artist in China, he could not stand quiet, and still today truth is his daily inspiration. However, truth now takes on a different challenge. He fights now against petty trends in contemporary art and keeps unwavering in his journey, which is far from over. Each year, a new discovery is made and his evolution as an artist continues. Shapes done in the past years might still have traces in his current work but the details always change, always evolve. The wood speaks, he listens. He explains, “I am always looking for ways to simplify my work, in the past I might have made a woman’s hair with two cuts on both sides of the head, later I decided that one cut on one side gave enough reference to the form being a female. Recently I combine the hair and the neck and further simplify the gesture to create a woman.” He searches new configurations with unswerving belief for what he knows in his heart and what the wood has to give.

One cannot understand Wang Keping’s work without understanding his playful humor.

The joyful soul of the roguish man is ever-present and always finds its way in the undertones of his work. He laughs teasingly when he shows you a work, a man with two penises, or in his latest bird series, The Cock Chair, a chair whose bird’s beak comes out between your legs as you straddle the neck. His masterpiece Adam and Eve, a woman with her vagina open on one side and a man with penis erect on the other. His series of

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lips, perhaps also a woman’s vulva he names Eternal smile. Eroticism is rife in his works.

Women with massive breasts, men with enormous erect penises are common. The Birds themselves are laden with phallic reference; it was pointed out to him by a collector and he later embraced the idea. As he says, “it is that which is familiar that makes us happy.”

He brings out the beasts within us through his works. An overt erotic exploration that he still to this day revels in laughter at his own creations. However, he says it comes to him naturally, “I don’t try and create an erotic sculpture. I don’t force it. Perhaps,” he explains, “it is from the sexual repression of my years in China. It was not allowed in China to show anything sexual or erotic.” He is still in constant revolt against this idea and it comes through in his work.

This latest exhibition, Birds - Harmony of the Forest, has been accomplished through many years of creating and keeping aside his bird sculptures to be shown for the first time together. This group of works remains very special to the artist, allowing him to work with such simple shapes, almost a swirl of movement creating an undefined formation within space. Endearing somehow with tenderness they urge to be caressed. Wang says, “My birds are not really birds,” a notion that is not hard to grasp as they are somewhere in between reality and otherness. We are reminded of Brancusi when we think of bird sculptures. Brancusi is indeed one of Wang Keping’s inspirations. He admires his simplicity.

The thread that ties them has long past. Wang’s work has evolved over the last 40 years to incorporate a lifetime of his collaboration with wood, nature and his simplified creatural sculptures. His bird sculptures are yet another way to express his meaning. His truth is somewhere in the core of our humanity and it is there inside the wood waiting for him to bring it out. The strength is the way he pulls all of these aspects together and Wang Keping does it with such poignancy and honesty that we are drawn to his works because they exude the joy of what art can give to all of us, truth and beauty.

1. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published anonymously in the January 1820, Number 15, issue of the magazine Annals of the Fine Arts.

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Bird 1982 Birch 42 x 47 x 20 cm

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Bird 2010 Plane 40 x 55 x 21 cm No. 10 - 17

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Bird 1990 Cedar 55 x 48 x 33 cm

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Bird 2015 Ash 58 x 30 x 18 cm

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Bird 1998 Acacia 40 x 12 x 19 cm No. 17 - 17

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Rooster 2015 Maple 45 x 54 x 20 cm No. 19 - 17

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Bird 2001 Cedar 41 x 50 x 17 cm No. 20 - 17

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Bird 1991 Cedar 26 x 43 x 23 cm No. 18 - 17

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Bird 2000 Cedar 72 x 80 x 20 cm

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Bird 2015 Ash 29 x 42 x 20 cm No. 13 - 17

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Maybe Bird 2013 Cedar 57 x 42 x 24 cm No. 5 - 17

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Bird 2010 Ash 32 x 46 x 23 cm No. 7 - 17

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Bird 2014 Maple 41 x 50 x 32 cm No. 8 - 17

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Bird 2008 Cherry 43 x 70 x 40 cm No. 9 - 17

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Bird 2004 Plane 27 x 40 x 26 cm No. 11 - 17

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Bird 2011 Maple 49 x 41 x 18 cm No. 12 - 17

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Bird 2012 Yew 46 x 26 x 17 cm No. 15 - 17

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Bird 2005 Plane 37 x 31 x 21 cm No. 16 - 17

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Bird 2010 Elm 52 x 31 x 13 cm No. 1 - 17

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Bird 2011 Cedar 33 x 42 x 30 cm No. 3 - 17

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Bird 2000 Cedar 30 x 30 x 26 cm No. 6 - 17

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Bird 2012 Cherry 52 x 43 x 40 cm

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Bird 2010 Cedar 33 x 35 x 21 cm No. 14 - 17

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Bird 2012 Acacia 47 x 58 x 39 cm

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“We should leave Wang Keping’s work to speak for itself. The “meaning” is in the form.

And what form!

If, as I believe, what has been called the “inner core” of art is the way in which the artist transforms feeling into form then we can see that mysterious process taking place before our eyes with Wang Keping’s passionate engagement with a chunk of wood.”

-Prof. Michael Sullivan Author Art and Artist’s of Twentieth-Century China (1996), The Arts of China (2000), The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (1989, revised and expanded edition 1997) and Modern Chinese Arts: A Biographical Dictionary (2006), formerly Emeritus fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University.

Bird 2011 Maple 31 x 55 x 20 cm

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Bird 2012 Elm 77 x 56 x 12 cm

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Bird 2010 Poplar 35 x 55 x 32 cm

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Bird 1993 Maple 39 x 46 x 37 cm

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Bird 2011 Catalpa 77 x 50 x 36 cm

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Bird 2013 Cedar 42 x 42 x 12 cm

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Bird 2006 Cypress 57 x 47 x 22 cm

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Bird 2006 Cypress 58 x 52 x 25 cm

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Bird 1996 Cherry 30 x 58 x 20 cm

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Bird 1989 Chestnut 40 x 25 x 19 cm No. 2 - 17

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Bird 2015 Elm 56 x 52 x 28 cm No. 4 - 17

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Wang Keping’s Studio

Bird Maternity 1989 Cherry 36 x 78 x 33 cm

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Bird 1995 Maple 68 x 18 x 16 cm

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Bird 2002 Cherry 61 x 25 x 23 cm

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The Cock Chair 2016 Cedar and Iron 67 x 43 x 52 cm

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Saint and Stork 2014 Cedar 67 x 74 x 29 cm

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Bird 1982 Birch 42 x 47 x 20 cm Page 10

Bird 2010 Plane 40 x 55 x 21 cm No. 10 - 17 Page 12

Bird 1998 Acacia 40 x 12 x 19 cm No. 17 - 17 Page 18

Rooster 2015 Maple 45 x 54 x 20 cm No. 19 - 17 Page 20

Bird 1990 Cedar 55 x 48 x 33 cm Page 14

Bird 2015 Ash 58 x 30 x 18 cm Page 16

Bird 2001 Cedar 41 x 50 x 17 cm No. 20 - 17 Page 21

Bird 1991 Cedar 26 x 43 x 23 cm No. 18 - 17 Page 24 96

Bird 2000 Cedar 72 x 80 x 20 cm Page 26

Bird 2015 Ash 29 x 42 x 20 cm No. 13 - 17 Page 28

Bird 2014 Maple 41 x 50 x 32 cm No. 8 - 17 Page 34

Bird 2008 Cherry 43 x 70 x 40 cm No. 9 - 17 Page 36

Maybe Bird 2013 Cedar 57 x 42 x 24 cm No. 5 - 17 Page 30

Bird 2010 Ash 32 x 46 x 23 cm No. 7 - 17 Page 31

Bird 2004 Plane 27 x 40 x 26 cm No. 11 - 17 Page 38

Bird 2011 Maple 49 x 41 x 18 cm No. 12 - 17 Page 40

Bird 2012 Yew 46 x 26 x 17 cm No. 15 - 17 Page 42

Bird 2005 plane 37 x 31 x 21 cm No. 16 - 17 Page 44

Bird 2000 Cedar 30 x 30 x 26 cm No. 6 - 17 Page 49

Bird 2012 Cherry 52 x 43 x 40 cm Page 52

Bird 2010 Elm 52 x 31 x 13 cm No. 1 - 17 Page 46

Bird 2011 Cedar 33 x 42 x 30 cm No. 3 - 17 Page 48

Bird 2010 Cedar 33 x 35 x 21 cm No. 14 - 17 Page 53

Bird 2012 Acacia 47 x 58 x 39 cm Page 56 100

Bird 2011 Maple 31 x 55 x 20 cm Page 60

Bird 2012 Elm 77 x 56 x 12 cm Page 62

Bird 2011 Catalpa 77 x 50 x 36 cm Page 68

Bird 2013 Cedar 42 x 42 x 12 cm Page 70

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Bird 2010 Poplar 35 x 55 x 32 cm Page 63

Bird 1993 Maple 39 x 46 x 37 cm Page 66

Bird 2006 Cypress 57 x 47 x 22 cm Page 71

Bird 2006 Cypress 58 x 52 x 25 cm Page 74 102

Bird 1996 Cherry 30 x 58 x 20 cm Page 76

Bird 1989 Chestnut 40 x 25 x 19 cm No. 2 - 17 Page 78

Bird 1995 Maple 68 x 18 x 16 cm Page 86

Bird 2002 Cherry 61 x 25 x 23 cm Page 88

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Bird 2015 Elm 56 x 52 x 28 cm No. 4 - 17 Page 80

Bird Maternity 1989 Cherry 36 x 78 x 33 cm Page 83

The Cock Chair 2016 Cedar and Iron 67 x 43 x 52 cm Page 89

Saint and Stork 2014 Cedar 67 x 74 x 29 cm Page 92 104

WANG KEPING 王 克 平

Wang Keping was born in Beijing in 1949. In 1979, he took part in the Beijing Spring Democracy Movement. He is a founder of the Stars Group (Xing Xing 星星), China’s first avant garde art group following the Cultural Revolution. In September 1979, the The Stars Group (Xing Xing 星星) organized the first non-conformist art exhibition on the gates of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. It had a great impact in China. He has been living and working in Paris since 1984.

HISTORICAL EXHIBITIONS 1979 First STARS (XING XING 星星) Exhibition, an unauthorized exhibition hung on the gates of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. Exhibition outlawed after 2 days.

1980 Second STARS (XING XING 星星) Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013 Wang Keping, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing 2010 La Chair des Forêts, Musée Zadkine, Paris 2008 He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen 1994 Museum fur Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt 1993 Chinese Modern Art Center, Osaka 105

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016

Figures, Musée national d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, M+Museum, Hong-Kong An/other avant-garde – China-Japan-Korea, Busan Biennale 2016, Busan Arts et Nature 2016, Domaine régional de Chaumont sur Loire

2015

The Civil Power - Minsheng Art Museum - Beijing

2013

Light before Dawn, Unofficial Chinese Art 1974-1985, Asia Society, Hong-Kong

2011

Artistes Chinois à Paris, Musée Cernushi, Paris Blooming in the Shadows, Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974-1985, China Institute, New York

2008 China Gold, Art Contemporain Chinois, Musée Maillol, Paris Go China – Writing on the Wall, Chinese Art from the Eighties and Nineties, Groninger Museum, Groningen Origin Point, The Stars 30 years, Today Museum, Beijing, China 2007

China Contemporary Art : the long march of the Avant-Garde, Contemporary Art Museum, Geneva China Onward, The Estella Collection, Chinese Contemporary Art 1966-2006, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen

2005 Chinese Contemporary Art from the Sigg Collection, Kunstmuseum, Bern 2004 Chine, le corps partout ?, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille 2001

Modern Chinese Art, The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection, Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford

2000 Le corps morcelé, Fondation d’art contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain, Les Mesnuls At the New Century, 1979-1999 China Contemporary Art’s Works, Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu 1999

Les Champs de la Sculpture, Champs-Elysées, Paris The Buyeo Gudurae Sculpture Park, Buyeo

1998

Vision 2000, Chinesische Gemälde und Skulpturen der Gegenwart, Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart

1992

Sculptures - Frédéric Bleuet, Peter Briggs, Wang Keping, Salle Saint-Jean, Hôtel de Ville de Paris 106

1989

Tian An Men, je me souviens, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

1983

Painting the Chinese Dream, Chinese Art 30 Years after the Revolution, Brooklyn Museum, New York

SELECTED COLLECTIONS Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Musée Cernuschi, Paris Domaine régional de Chaumont sur Loire M+ Uli Sigg Collection, M+ the New Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong Aidekman Art Center, Boston Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Collection de la Ville de Paris, Paris Buyeo Gudurae International Sculpture Park, Buyeo He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka Museum of Modern Art, Taizhong The Olympic Sculpture Park, Seoul

AWARDS Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2015)

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Wang Keping and a pigeon at the Grand Palais in 2014

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ALL WORKS OF ART COPYRIGHT Š WANG KEPING A VIBRANT LIFE PUBLICATION / 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Designed by Frankie Leong Photo credit Michel Lunardelli, page 1 and 58 Photo credit Katie de Tilly, page 94-95 Other photo credits to the artist This catalogue is published on the occasion of Birds - Harmony of the Forest exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong from 26 April, 2017 - 3 June, 2017.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-988-16893-9-9 Printed in Hong Kong, 2017 10 Chancery Lane Gallery G/F 10 Chancery Lane, SoHo, Central, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2810 0065 E-mail: info@10chancerylanegallery.com www.10chancerylanegallery.com