Celebrating Asian Art

Moonlight on Stones

Wang Mansheng 王满晟
May 20-July 23, 2022
Opening reception: Friday, May 20, 6-8pm
Curated by Dr. Chao Ling

Fu Qiumeng Fine Art is pleased to present Moonlight on Stones, the gallery’s first solo exhibition devoted to the Asian-American landscape artist Wang Mansheng (born 1962). Wang uses self-invented organic painting materials, in addition to conventional ones, to explore contemporary forms of landscape and finds enchanting and enlightening visual structures to embody his perception of nature.

Born in Shanxi, China, and a graduate of Shanghai’s Fudan University in classical Chinese literature, Wang became a professional artist after he immigrated to the US. Drawing on traditional sources from his Chinese heritage, observation of landscapes throughout the world, and immediate experience in the Hudson River Valley, Wang has developed a distinctive visual language, deeply enriches the philosophical connotations of landscape painting, and brings a traditional Chinese subject into global context with his unique perspective and practice.

Moonlight on Stones features 19 paintings selected from Wang’s Night Mountain and Ancient Trees series. These artworks, executed between 2008 and the present, are on display for the first time. Each work in the Night Mountain collection is inspired by a line from classical Chinese poetry. The relationship between text and image–a traditional scope–has been enacted in a novel way through the artist’s sensitivity and intellectual interests. The Ancient Trees collection represents his consideration of longevity and form. In intimate contact with the ecosystem of the Hudson River Valley, he makes brushes and ink out of local organic materials to paint objects found in the area while demonstrating his reflections on lines, shape and texture.

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Chao Ling, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong. An exhibition catalog will be published, in which his introductory essay will be included.

Scholar's Lecture: Poetic Construction of Multiple Times in Tang Poetry
Friday, June 10, 6-8pm
In this Scholar's Lecture, Dr. Chao Ling, curator of the exhibition, will use the Tang poet Li Shen's (772–846) 李紳 Twenty Poems on the New Tower 新樓詩二十首 as an example to discuss some linguistic and poetic issues. First, how do Chinese poets, responding to the challenge of a syntactically tenseless Chinese language, articulate temporal concepts—such as the sense of temporality, grammatical aspect, and instant in time? Also, why does poetry, which is primarily about spatial constructs (in particular high towers), often yield to a reflection on time?

Dr. Chao Ling (born 1987) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong. Ling primarily researches classical Chinese poetry and art history, with a special focus on the medieval period. He also works on literary theory and philosophical investigations of the relationship between text and image. Ling holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University (2019) and a B.A. in Chinese Languages and Literatures from Peking University (2009).

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