Introducing Wang Lin: A Reflection on Process and Media
Words by Wang Lin
I am not a person who is good at expressing thoughts in words, so naturally I focus more on the journey of my creation.
Creation is a process of storytelling, through which my thoughts on society and myself are released. Most of my work is created in mixed media, often mixed with video. In the process of using video, the narrative of the video itself is implied, and the story to be expressed is interwoven in the technique and in the overall presentation of the work. Such implicit expression is more suited to my work.
My work is roughly composed of two parts. The first part is my Intaglio prints, which are created by applying the early photosensitive techniques and some installation works; and the second part is my prints that are created by combining traditional water-based woodcuts with poetic and surreal elements that have been extracted from video art.
The Intaglio prints and lighting installation works integrate early photosensitive technology into my creativity. I’ve been able to establish my own art practice through the process of learning the technique and building up a personal aesthetic. Overall, I try to convey emotions to the audience in a calm, narrative way.
Image: “A Journey on a Bright Night I”
Image: “A Journey on a Bright Night III”
The work “A Journey on a Bright Night” was inspired by my thoughts of surrounding environment. A change of environment leads to uncertainty surrounding one’s own identity. To view the change of an environment in a detached way is both the source of such feeling and also the way to deal with it. This work is presented in a combination of Intaglio painting and a lighting installation. It is an Intaglio print in the normal sense when viewed by the normal light source, and when the characters appear and disappear through gradually fading light and shadow, the fierce emotional conflict is expressed in a calm way. The work attempts to calm the viewer to a slower than normal breathing rate and the viewer is then brought into the artist’s narrative.
The water-based prints in the second par are inspired by my focus on the artistic language in “Chinization”, not only because water-based prints have unique ontological language, but also because of the cultural attributes behind them.
More emotional elements are added in the creation process. I pay more attention to the visual effects such as transparency and light, so as to convey the poetic and surreal theme of each work. This is evident in works such as “Qingping Mountain Scenery” and “Shining and Trickling”.
Image: “Qingping Mountain Scenery”
Image: “Shining and Trickling”
The quantity of my works may not be considerable in recent years, but each work I’ve produced has gone through a very complex emotional journey, and the subsequent results are actually the continuous fermentation process of these thoughts.The difference from with my early creativities and now is that when one’s social role began to change, one’s role in society begins to to add more layers too. In a more complex environment today, you need to switch roles frequently, and this means you often need a deeper self reflection too. This has shone through in my most recent work.