T'ang Haywen : Ink in Movement

A single trace is enough for T’ang in order to evoke nature, in an analogy that has been the mark of Taoist painting for centuries. The gesture of the artist responds to an interior need, as Shitao testified himself in his “Precepts on Painting”. T’ang utilizes the round brush, that transcribes all the movements of the hand, the paper preventing any retouch. This gesture becomes a bridge between the individual and the world, it is at once both subjective and universal.

The luminous void of the white paper, traversed by serpentine strokes, is the best expression of life, where every spot of ink is a mark of vital energy. It is this same philosophy of gesture that the great representatives of Lyrical Abstraction, like Soulages and Hartung, are searching for when they start to study Oriental philosophy.

T’ang inscribes in his landscapes a characteristic fluidity, a vision of landscape painting that is founded not on the form, but on the spirit. The notion of Tao at the centre of Chinese painting brings forth a vision of art not as representation, but as translation of the living spirit of an object or a place. Everything is built on the principle of tension between complementary forces.