PKBJ 艺术 | 798桥艺术空间展览预告 | 《空间指引》王非新作展

Every breakthrough in art lies in activating new spatial perceptions, from the focal perspective of the Renaissance to the Eastern flatness of Impressionism, from Cubism's two-and-a-half dimensions to the grid of abstract painting, from Duchamp's four-dimensional space in The Large Glass to the geometric cubes of Minimalism, from Warhol's image repetition on flat surfaces to Beuys's social sculpture, and so on. How can painting, especially Ink-art, break through the bottleneck of over a century of modernity and open up new planes? Wang Fei's current exhibition offers spatial navigate!

Wang Fei's paintings over the past five years have formed a triple spatial navigate:

First, it evokes the tactile depth of childhood furniture cabinets through its ink-black blocks imbued with Rubik's Cube and surrealist connotations—a minimalist expression that suggests mournful ink and ink-laden mourning. This lends ink painting a tension that simultaneously embraces life and death, serving as an authentic expression of contemporary sentiment.

Second, unique knife-ink techniques carve out openwork fractal floral patterns, reminiscent of furniture lacework. This allows ink and color to manifest unprecedented magical forms and dreamlike spaces, where decorative textures unfold mysterious realms through bizarre, grotesque transformations.

Third, floral motifs proliferate into boundless cosmic expanses. Accompanied by the romanticism of splashed color, the paintings radiate vibrant spirit and tender emotion. The flat surface transforms into an instantly morphing stage for magical spirits, as if AI screens emitted a magnificent roar.

These threefold spaces continue to rotate and fold within the artist's magical craftsmanship, constantly intersecting between squares and ovals, between black and gold. The blooming tiger sings of a vitality never before seen in Ink-art.

The triple space of Wang Fei's works, with its high-dimensional spatial imagination, allows the long-standing cultural and historical memory to secretly undulate and mysteriously reorganize within it. The pictorial memories of ancient China's Classic of Mountains and Seas and Sanxingdui overlap with the ethereal mountain visions of medieval pottery figurines and Boshan incense burners. ghostly masks emerge from the crevices of Ming-style furniture, only to be folded into the organology of contemporary technological machinery. Desire machines and breathing machines are collaged into nine-tiered demon towers—wondrous spectacles or alien realms. Yet the overall perception remains suspended between Ruin and Splendor, or Brocade and Ash. This grants powerful visual expression to the late Qing concept of “Piles of Brocade and Ash”—China's quest for modern transformation since the late Qing era. It liberates Chinese ink wash painting from its own confines, initiating a purely spatial guidance that allows spiritual energy to manifest in infinitely unfolding, exquisite forms.

The navigate of space is the endless openness of space: let the space fly, let the space breathe, let the space bloom, let the space face life and death, let the space bloom with the warmth of craftsmanship, let the space sing in color, let the space travel through ghosts and brightness, what kind of free art is this!

Wang Fei's new works demonstrate a path for the contemporary transformation and internationalization of Ink painting: transcending the confines of subject matter, imagery, and so-called brushwork techniques. Instead, all artistic cultivation is redirected toward the pure expression of space and time. The uniqueness of materials and cultural memory can only regrow on the branches of the individual artist's pure spatial realm. This is also what Wang Fei's paintings embody—the mystique of imagination and the brilliance of color perception, manifested through the fractal divisions and magical inversions of space.