Chen Wenguang Exhibition
Dillon Gallery
This event has ended.
Chen occupies a unique position in the quintessentially Japanese art form of Nihonga (literally translated, “Japanese Painting”), as both outsider and insider. Initially trained in traditional Chinese painting at the renowned Gaungzhou Art Academy, Chen received his Masters and Doctorate at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music under the tutelage of Kayama Matazo, the most celebrated Nihonga painter of the 20th century. Chen was the first artist not of Japanese descent to complete this training.
In an intriguing twist of history, the technical development of Nihonga can be traced directly back to the blue and green landscape painting style of the Tang Dynasty in China. Chen Wenguang, who has been a professor at Guangzhou Art Academy for almost twenty years, has brought the technique that passed over a millennium ago from China to Japan full circle, teaching his students the application of mineral pigment and gold and silver leaf. His own art masterfully combines key elements of the traditions of both nations.
Steve Owyoung, former curator of the famed Asian Art Department at the St. Louis Art Museum, says that Chen’s paintings are “a return to Chinese art and its inherently decorative foundations; each work is a contemporary revelation of tradition, an innovative take on its subjects, techniques, and materials.” He comments that it is the work’s “masterful technique, its invention, its striking beauty – that makes it so important and relevant.”
Wenguang Chen has garnered extensive critical attention in China and Japan. His work is represented in the collections of a number of museums, including the Sato Museum, the Daiichi Museum and the Guangdong Museum, China. Chen has also been honored with a solo exhibition at the Guangdong Museum.
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Schedule
from October 07, 2011 to November 01, 2011