AGONCILLO-LA RIOJA.- Museo Wurth La Rioja presents the exhibition After the Flood, which brings together the work by the prestigious Chinese artist Gao Xingjian(Ganzhou, China, 1940), 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. A selection of 80 recently created artworks, including ink paintings on canvas and paper.
Regarded as one of the most important Chinese writers at present, Gao Xingjian still is not well known as a painter in Spain, although he is recognized by the international art scene and his oeuvre was previously exhibited at the Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid, 2002). His work has been presented in several solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the United States, and is included in important art collections around the world.
Gao’s art emerges from an unique fusion of Oriental and Western cultures. His painting is characterized by the dominant use of traditional Chinese means –such as rice paper, Chinese ink and brushes-, but his technique reveals to be thoroughly modern. Through his comprehensive study of modern Western art, Gao has finely appreciated the importance given to the physical act of painting, the exploration on pictorial materiality, and specially, the autonomous status of painting.
The exhibition After the Flood comprises large and medium-scale canvases and works on rice paper rendered in Chinese ink, carried out in 2008 and is fully representative of Gao’s style. The artworks exude a fluid technique and spontaneous overflow, with lightly brushstrokes, by means of which he explores the painterly possibilities of ink. White and black, light and shadow, achieve a great variety of tonalities, giving a sensual and poetic effect full of texture. The pictures fluctuate between figurative and abstract painting, depicting images that in a broader sense remind of landscapes and inner worlds, as well as cosmic processes inspired by the artists’ reflections on the complexity of the human existence.
Gao Xingjian was born in 1940, in the Chinese province of Jianxi. Novelist, dramatist, theatre director, literary critic, stage director and painter, he studied French literature, worked as translator and, later, as scriptwriter at the Theatre of Popular Art in Beijing. The theatrical debut of the plays Signal Alarm (1982) and Bus Stop (1983) was condemned by the Chinese authorities and, in 1986, his work was definitely banned. A year later, Gao went into exile in Paris, where he has lived since then, and became French citizen in 1998. In France, he published Soul Mountain (1990), one of his most famous and acclaimed novels. Amongst other International awards, in 2000 Gao Xingjian received the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also named Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’ Honneur by the President of the Republic of France.
