Tang Chenghua

Tang Chenghua (b. 1964) began his artistic training when China started opening up to the West. Although his aesthetic taste and training is firmly grounded in Chinese tradition, having traveled and worked in Japan, the United States, and Europe, Tang Chenghua must be considered as international contemporary artist. Equally at home working in ink painting on paper, lithography, or oil on canvas, while his works areunmistakably Chinese in nature, in today’s globalized world, the distinction between traditional Chinese painting and Western painting is similar to that which we make when we refer to sinology; although these conventions are increasingly less important or relevant, in the field of art, distinctions primarily exists to make the differences in pictorial style between east and west more explicit. I argue that Tang Chenghua is a contemporary calligrapher, but this label is not intended to typecast or underestimate his work. Instead, I hope to highlight and contextualize the remarkable creativity of this artist who translates sheer life into art, experiencing time and rhythm in shifting space as registered traces on paper or canvas, as only a calligrapher can.

My Present Exhibition