Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan: To Paint the Written World
Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to present 鈥淭o Paint the Written World鈥�, duo exhibition of Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan, opening on 8 July 2023 (Saturday), 2鈥�6 pm. The artists and the gallery founder Johnson Chang will be attend and share their ideas at 2:30-3:30pm.
鈥榃ord鈥� is the carnal flesh of 鈥業dea鈥�; and like any carnal existence, it begets ideas of its own.
鈥榃ord鈥� is the idea of things, events, desires鈥攐f all that exists and that is yet non-existing; it puts everything in place, and a World appears. Human ideas arise out of word realities. It is all wonderfully delirious, and wonderfully delicious.
The paintings of Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan take the flesh of the word, its visual aspect, as the subject of their playful imagination. They are both interested in how the written word evokes particular realities; and how, as a graphic form, it inadvertently spills over into channels of unintended meanings and visions. With the two artists coming together in one exhibition, their separate languages allow us to see with multiple pairs of eyes.
Christian Schwarzwald is interested in the writing of words as an act of drawing which, as a system of gestural practice, draws forth specific realties. He has produced many 鈥榮ets鈥� of gestural technique, each of which, like an alphabetic language, develops a schematic vocabulary that may be used to compose 鈥榚ssays鈥�. The advantage of the alphabetic language is its relation to the human voice; any number of words may be created with a limited set of phonetic signs, and the artist hints at this feature in his freely arranged sets of serial paintings, even though his interest is to explore the non-vocal dimension of the 鈥榓lphabet鈥�. In this exhibition we see how the artist鈥檚 鈥榓lphabets鈥� might be turned into graphic icons like the GROW series, or how they may appear to coax ideographic words out of unidentifiable 鈥榦bjects鈥� like the MONONO drawings. Reversing the process of 鈥榳riting鈥� on the blank sheet, the artist has also developed a special technique by applying a vacuum cleaner to the 鈥榰n-formed鈥� colour surface of painted monochromes. By wiping across the surface with gestural strokes that hoover up colour pigment to create blank lines on the canvas, he reveals, like the dawn of Creation, hidden forms beneath.
Kurt Chan approaches the written word from the perspective of Chinese ideographs, an angle very different from that of Christian Schwarzwald. Each written form of a Chinese ideographic character is already laden with pictorial reference, and each has a visual existence that we may peruse as we might look upon a 鈥榣andscape鈥�. And 鈥榣andscape鈥� is the kind of visuality Kurt Chan aligns his word-paintings with; there is a vista in his abstraction, and a play of articulated shapes among contrasting distances. Like traditional 鈥榤ountain-water鈥� painting, Kurt Chan invites viewers for a stroll in his 鈥榳ord-scape鈥� to explore the world opened up by an individual word or a word-phrase. Of course we are always aware it is Kurt Chan鈥檚 own stroll that we are following, and there is no danger even as we fall through an unexpected rabbit hole into a wonderland.
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Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to present 鈥淭o Paint the Written World鈥�, duo exhibition of Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan, opening on 8 July 2023 (Saturday), 2鈥�6 pm. The artists and the gallery founder Johnson Chang will be attend and share their ideas at 2:30-3:30pm.
鈥榃ord鈥� is the carnal flesh of 鈥業dea鈥�; and like any carnal existence, it begets ideas of its own.
鈥榃ord鈥� is the idea of things, events, desires鈥攐f all that exists and that is yet non-existing; it puts everything in place, and a World appears. Human ideas arise out of word realities. It is all wonderfully delirious, and wonderfully delicious.
The paintings of Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan take the flesh of the word, its visual aspect, as the subject of their playful imagination. They are both interested in how the written word evokes particular realities; and how, as a graphic form, it inadvertently spills over into channels of unintended meanings and visions. With the two artists coming together in one exhibition, their separate languages allow us to see with multiple pairs of eyes.
Christian Schwarzwald is interested in the writing of words as an act of drawing which, as a system of gestural practice, draws forth specific realties. He has produced many 鈥榮ets鈥� of gestural technique, each of which, like an alphabetic language, develops a schematic vocabulary that may be used to compose 鈥榚ssays鈥�. The advantage of the alphabetic language is its relation to the human voice; any number of words may be created with a limited set of phonetic signs, and the artist hints at this feature in his freely arranged sets of serial paintings, even though his interest is to explore the non-vocal dimension of the 鈥榓lphabet鈥�. In this exhibition we see how the artist鈥檚 鈥榓lphabets鈥� might be turned into graphic icons like the GROW series, or how they may appear to coax ideographic words out of unidentifiable 鈥榦bjects鈥� like the MONONO drawings. Reversing the process of 鈥榳riting鈥� on the blank sheet, the artist has also developed a special technique by applying a vacuum cleaner to the 鈥榰n-formed鈥� colour surface of painted monochromes. By wiping across the surface with gestural strokes that hoover up colour pigment to create blank lines on the canvas, he reveals, like the dawn of Creation, hidden forms beneath.
Kurt Chan approaches the written word from the perspective of Chinese ideographs, an angle very different from that of Christian Schwarzwald. Each written form of a Chinese ideographic character is already laden with pictorial reference, and each has a visual existence that we may peruse as we might look upon a 鈥榣andscape鈥�. And 鈥榣andscape鈥� is the kind of visuality Kurt Chan aligns his word-paintings with; there is a vista in his abstraction, and a play of articulated shapes among contrasting distances. Like traditional 鈥榤ountain-water鈥� painting, Kurt Chan invites viewers for a stroll in his 鈥榳ord-scape鈥� to explore the world opened up by an individual word or a word-phrase. Of course we are always aware it is Kurt Chan鈥檚 own stroll that we are following, and there is no danger even as we fall through an unexpected rabbit hole into a wonderland.
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