Empty Valley
Tang Song
唐宋
Production date
2013
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
260 x 380 cm
Notes
The deep red in Empty Valley (2010-2013), creates accents in a complex cage-like construction of Tang Song’s characteristic incised lines, which criss-cross the surface unrelentingly. Lost Way (2010-2013), in contrast, is divided in half horizontally, black below and white above, with red directional lines creating the sense of an inescapable vortex. These large works, despite their hints at brutalist architecture and urban spaces, may also be read as allusions to the Chinese tradition of the literati garden: with their deliberate Yin Yang complementarity and framed views, these created landscapes were multi-dimensional immersive spaces filled with literary and artistic allusion, designed for contemplation.
In one of the earliest known treatises of painting in China, Painting Yuntai Mountain by Gu Kai Zhi (344–406 CE), the painter wrote, ‘…the perspective of objective things turns everything upside down. Pure qi brings down the mountains!’ Tang’s ambiguous spatial illusions, referencing the Chinese tradition in which both artist and viewer are imagined wandering freely through the landscape, may be said, indeed, to ‘turn everything upside down’.
In one of the earliest known treatises of painting in China, Painting Yuntai Mountain by Gu Kai Zhi (344–406 CE), the painter wrote, ‘…the perspective of objective things turns everything upside down. Pure qi brings down the mountains!’ Tang’s ambiguous spatial illusions, referencing the Chinese tradition in which both artist and viewer are imagined wandering freely through the landscape, may be said, indeed, to ‘turn everything upside down’.
Accession number
2013.211