2018.09.30 – 2018.11.02

Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou

Curator: Feng Boyi

Art Director: Wang Shaoqiang

Preface

Wang Shaoqiang

Director of Guangdong Museum of Art

Ding Yi’s classical symbols × and ＋ lead to imagination about the use of signs as language in abstract art. Ding Yi, who graduated from the Fine Arts College at Shanghai University, has been producing artwork using his original ＋ and its new variant × since the late 1980s. Since then, his use of these symbols to abstract and deconstruct images has become a signature style. Ding Yi works across a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installations and architecture, and has continually sought ways to explore the artistic characteristics of different materialistic specificities. Compared to many local and international practitioners of abstract art today, Ding Yi deploys a more creative range of palettes and materials. No matter his use of tone and shade or his combination of canvases and woods all follow a strong design that witfully embeds his complex feelings about Shanghai, his city of residence. For the viewer, Ding’s ideas are portrayed in clear and simple terms. Ding Yi himself has said that each cross can be understood as an expression of printing lexicon, and as a precise symbol of the rational design that Ding Yi has for each painting’s visual representation. Ding Yi often names his artwork of “Appearance of Crosses” with just the year of completion, which allows viewers to trace the evolution of his artistic ontology in his work. Ever since the exhibition of several of his works in black and white at the Venice Biennale in 1993, Ding Yi’s notion of “Appearance of Crosses” have become ever more prominent in the global spectacle. The crosses are a symbolised language that constructs Ding Yi’s visual narrative. Such symbols speak not only to his own experiences with contemporary society and art-making; Ding has further made a surgical analysis and intrepid explorations, of materials, forms, media and language in his artwork. Sir Ernst Gombrich once researched our awareness of ‘order’, and discovered a difference between the formulaic pyramid psychology which stated that consciousness tended towards simplicity, and his own understanding of the ‘breakdown’ of order. When new changes occur in an ordered environment – or even in a non-ordered environment – a certain level of tension exists. The new, organic elements in the changing environment then begin to establish their own new order with which they direct our consciousness. When we consider this fact, Ding Yi’s crosses give us insights into the nature of patterns and order. Ding has consistently used the same cross symbols throughout his career, and through his repetition, deconstruction, simplification and abstracting of form, the viewer gets a glimpse of the Mondrian in him. Ding has continually experimented with a kaleidoscope of monochrome, light, and fluorescent tones. He has also explored extensively on different mediums including acrylic-on-canvas, chequered nylon, chalk on paper, charcoal and coloured pencil work. By working with a myriad of different materials, Ding Yi has added meat to the bones of his simple overall cross theme. The visual order of the many repeated crosses and the abstract portrayal of rational logic give Ding Yi’s work a veil of mystery, which drives the passion and thirst for knowledge about contemporary abstract art. This upcoming exhibition of Ding’s work will be curated by renowned art critic Feng Boyi. Feng, who curated the inaugural Guangzhou Triennial, has a dedicated career in curating and art theory research of Chinese contemporary art, particularly in new art and trends in Guangdong province. For Ding, this is his first solo exhibition at the Guangdong Museum of Art, despite his former exhibition experience here. In addition to a selection of Ding’s past and latest pieces, the Museum will also exhibit several collector’s items held by Ding Yi. Furthermore, the curator and the artist have especially organised the artwork and themes specific to the site conditions for better interaction with the audience, so as to stimulate viewers to proactively engage in the interpreration and study of contemporary art. We hope that the upcoming exhibition will profoundly open up the discussion of contemporary abstract art and give members of the public a better grasp of the latest ideas and visual language in the constant evolution of contemporary art, as exemplified by Ding Yi’s “Appearance of Crosses”.

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