Huang Kuang-Nan's ink aesthetics can be traced near to the postwar first-generation ink painting masters and far to the Chinese painting of Song Dynasty. The Song painter, Guo Xi said, "Body as mountain and river, therefore to paint is to be there." Huang Kuang-Nan also writes articles to give a detailed exposition of this expression. This exhibition features Huang Kuang-Nan's painting aesthetics originating from Guo Xi, explores deep into the level of communion of object and mind in his ink creation, and accordingly categorizes the works and does the exhibit arrangement.
"Body as mountain and river" means that the painter gets close to the landscape with his own body and that the landscape is the indispensable extension of the painter's body. Without the landscape, there is no complete body. It is evidently that in Huang Kuang-Nan's ink works, mountains, waters,..trees, rocks, streets, towns, flowers, and birds all belong to the body fields. Therefore, this exhibition expects to present the viewers with the multiple aesthetic experiences of the artist of the farm, of the city, of the duty, and of the meditation.
Huang Kuang-Nan is an outstanding artist of the second generation after ink painting went eastward after World War II. He used to receive the instructions and teachings from the first-generation ink masters, Fu Chuan-Fu, Huang Chun-Pi, and Lin Yu-Shan, and established his own style of new lit-erati painting among the second-generation ink artists.
He was born in a farmer's family in Kaohsiung in 1944. His works are often with the pastoral poetic feeling. Since his engagement in art teaching and public service in the north, his works have been overflowed with the humanistic care despite his long residence in the city. In the modern and contemporary art thinking, he also emphasizes the time meaning of ink art.
In the past thirty something years, he has been put in the important positions by the country and served as the significant cultural positions such as Minister without Portfolio and National Policy Advisor to the President. However, his life content is full of the power of art and aesthetics. Therefore, ink art has always been the core of Huang Kuang-Nan's life practice...
Liao Jen-I, PhD, Aesthetics, University of Paris-Nanterre, France. He had assumed the office of director of Cultural Center of Taiwan in Paris and the director of Lanyang Museum. He is actually the director of Graduate Institute of Museum Studies, Taipei National University of the Arts. Hespecialized in aesthetics, art criticism and art museum study. His works include "Contemporary Practice of Aesthetic Perspective: Art Criticism and Curatorial Discourse", and so on.
