SHADING WILLOWS AND BLOOMING FLOWERS

by WU LIANG 

The themes of Han Dong's paintings interweaves repeatedly, they are always embedded in the works of Han Dong, the objects, shadows, projections, traces, remnants, the reappearances after erasing, the objective images of the objects, the silhouettes of the shadows. In this late fall season, they are continuing to retreat to the severe winter, into a distant perspective. All the faded, the nameless chaos, vague light, fuzzy boundaries and variability, together they were cast into thousands of trickles, disappeared in the depths of the paintings.

Han Dong said that he hadn't gone to Shanghai for a year. I replied, on the contrary, I've forgotten how many times I've been to Yangzhou in this year, if it wasn’t for Han Dong, how would I come to Yangzhou? The mild fatigue of the journey, the panoramic view of on both sides of the railway line is a indifferent delight for me. The frigid current is approaching, Han Dong named his next exhibition “SHADING WILLOWS AND BLOOMING FLOWERS”，still with a little help of photography, a subtle subtraction method of light ink, exchanging space for time, he was deep in the bustling Yangzhou hinterland, soundless and stirless, no one knows exactly what he was painting, his works were humble and quiet, swallowed the substance, leaving only a thin layer of virtual image, what we see on our hurried journey has become a faint barrier of distance and stillness for Han Dong.

Han Dong’s painting have to be looked closer, closer, and closer, his painting is a fusion of air and water, using only a small amount of ink, with an almost invisible way to depict “them” meticulously, those images, the dark shades, pale lights, ripples, particles, panoramic perspective, ditches on the bright moon... quiet, all too quiet, the sound of the wind and leaves, passes without trace, falls into the water, all things normalizing into one, everything is emptiness... You start to retreat, step back again, a interfering sound appears, then the noise, even the train whistle coming from afar, the silence of John Cage, peels, pauses, waits, you will see your empty self, your thoughtless and floating self, barren, vague, in the middle of nowhere. 

Han Dong said that he can retire next year, in that instant, his face broke into a child-like smile... I recalled a man’s singing: I have been waiting, day and night, I have not seen the passage of time, there are many invitations, I want to go back to my home, going to draw my pictures, an earthly world and a flash of enlightenment...

A big gray cat that Han Dong had been raising for four years ran away, it was replaced by the other two big tabby cats, the epitaph on Duchamp’s tombstone reads: “Besides, it’s always the others who die", then, grey cat or tabby cat, in terms of Han Dong they are the same, at this very moment, it squatted in a chair listening to our speech, is it not so? the pomegranates were ripe, rotten in the earth, eat by people or by birds, what’s the difference between them, after all, the inertial life, summer goes and winter comes, at the end of Wugu Lane, Han Dong do his subtraction gradually, the sun rises, he began to work, no one saw what he painted when hidden in the wing-room, a view of his back appears on the southern window, as far as he could see, a gray world implicitly or explicitly emerges, the twilight was melted into the sunset.