While continuously exploring the impressionistic quality of colour ink painting, Wang Qing-Zhou experiments with three-dimensional art including painted sculptures and installations, an indication of his open attitude, confidence in and insight into innovation.

　　Wang's recent painted sculptures endow ordinary creatures with purpose and meaning by adopting a colourist approach. The organic form of the final artwork is achieved through continuous variations and experimentations. Colours on the roots, branches, gigantic pebbles and rustic rocks have varied intriguingly, so these natural materials become unique, autonomous and independent.

　　Besides gold, the main colour of this series of works, most artworks use primary colours. A few marble sculptures use cyan and green from the landscape ink paintings. But each colour is applied with intensity, presented competitively to balance the artwork. Undoubtedly, Wang applies his rich experiences from impressionistic ink paintings on articulating his sculptural language system. Beholders might be confused by the exaggeration, distortion and bizarreness of some root carving sculptures. However, the colours are certainly not incongruous because of their poetic pleasing nature.

　　Wang's creation doesn't intervene in the natural forms of objects, reserving the roundness, hollowness, the swirls or the follicles resembling the unstructured shapes during natural growth. These forms then become visual illusions, which derive from the artist's interests. The non-artificial quality of his sculptures creates spaces for viewers to interpret and appreciate. These spaces can be perceived as empty or open voids.

　　In addition to his remarkable handling of colours and shapes, Wang's painted sculptures also demonstrate the spatial feature of the linear approach. Physical characteristics of lines can illustrate spatial features. By depicting the curves and twists in his root carving works, by representing the texture, waterline and pores of the stones, Wang manipulates visual experience by highlights and implications, constructs spatial orders and meanings. Colours, shapes, lines are merged organically, but lines are not mere means to express emotions and experiences.

　　Wang's painted sculptures, whether they are root carvings or marble ones with holes, have a sense of form containing voids before colours are applied. These three-dimensional open spaces can almost be transcended or be included by solid materials. Open shape can surround or stretch between solid materials. Henry Moore, the leading innovative sculptor of the 20th century, was one of the first artists applying such shapes, which is a negative space creating a new realm of space depicting internal planes and painterly quality of planes. It also opens withheld channels for perceiving sculptures in the artworks, reduces extra weights. Consciousness of negative space aesthetics allowed Chinese artists to reinterpret artificial rocks and root craving artworks.

　　In general, using natural materials to create art is different from the Duchampian approach of using ready-made objects, because natural objects such as roots and pebbles could be easily associated with natural aesthetics. The so-called imagery aesthetics eradicate shapes and highlight poetic meanings. To some extent, the features of abstractism, the simplistic forms with obscure meanings, are overcome by the aesthetics. But in a deeper sense, the meanings are transcendental.

　　I certainly look forward to seeing more of Wang's three-dimensional experimentation of artworks exploring beyond natural materials and the resurrection of nature. What I do expect is his strength in ideas and sharpness of critique for creating his artistic conception.

　　When science and consumerism disenchant the natural world hand in hand, art is undoubtedly responsible for the re-enchantment of nature.

　　September, 2014

　　(Professor, PhD Supervisor at Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University)