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Arts & Communication Wang Yiming : Edges of the inaccessible

mimesis to abstraction, accompanying a quest for purity Chinese painting with color; the verticality of prints with
and transcendence then continues at the end of the 2010s, the horizontality of canvases on the ground; the precision
which mark the beginning of the “large installations.” In of immemorial gestures with instinctive gestures; and the
2017, helped by a team of volunteers, Wang Yiming made intellectual symbolism of the “modulation of lines” with
in situ 83 Flags, or loungta, measuring fifteen meters by the naturalness of ephemeral and changing installations,
3 m. On these gigantic jute canvases, the artist let himself sculpted by the light, the relief, and the wind.
go into automatic gestures, close to the action painting of a However, Wang Yiming’s work cannot be limited to
Pollock or informal practices. Each of these works in this a single modernist posture. By choosing to lose himself
respect becomes not an image, but a simple receptacle of in the heart of arid immensities, the artist seems to seek,
an emotion, of a sensitive experience, born of the encounter above all, to return. The wandering and the adventure
with what is called in Latin the genius loci, which means are intimately linked, indeed, to a certain availability of
the spirit of the place or the energy of the landscape. being; as soon as the constraints of the daily life do not
Moreover, they are also thought of as offerings, made to apply anymore, they become propitious to the reverie,
this sublime territory, inspiring both terror and ecstasy. to intimate meditations allowing to reveal a true self.
The Flags were then arranged in the manner of primitive When they are associated with the sublime character of a
structures, such as the Giant of Wilmington or the spirals of landscape, making us aware of human fragility, they reveal
the Nazca Desert, to create symbolic forms that can be seen in us archaic sensations and emotions, in which culture
from the sky. This was the time when the artist had just does not cease to bury and erase. As Philippe Jaccottet
named his painting Waiting for the Wind, and installations notes, in his book La Promenade sous les arbres:
such as Eye, Rainbow, or Glorious Past seem to complete
an itinerary that goes from the near to the far, and from “It is likely that great emotions make us sense our links
paintings to what the Anglo-Saxon critics call “earthwork.” with the outside world, suggest a hidden unity, and
make us find very old images that seem to be deposited
2. Poetics of the uprooting at a certain depth of human memory. Perhaps, these
It is indeed quite difficult to categorize Wang Yiming’s kinds of revelations are granted to us because we are
creations, which are at the same time a “happening” detached from ourselves and more open to the lessons
[3]
installation and an abstract art. The generic category, of the outside world” .
which seems to illuminate the different facets of his work In agreement with Jaccottet, Wang Yiming’s poetics,
in the most convincing way, remains that of Land Art. As which led him to paint in and with the landscape, to
it was defined in the West in the early 1970s, Land Art pay attention to the natural realm of silent things, are
was immediately placed under the sign of rupture and concomitant with the rediscovery of a primordial base.
transgression. “Isolation” affirms the artist Walter de Maria It is easy to observe such a will at work in the painter’s
in 1983 and “constitutes its only and unique essence,” technique. We have already mentioned the simplicity of
seeking to consume the rupture of a certain fringe of artists instinctive gestures; the process of purification leading to
with the excesses of the globalization by this formula, while the turning away of images; the place left to chance, to the
celebrating the birth of a new ecological conscience. It is unconscious, to seize, as close as possible; and the spouting
striking to note that this idea applies with great ease to the of an elemental sensitivity. It should also be noted that the
work of Wang Yiming, based on what is called “the poetics sensual aspect, almost carnal, of the sketches, are realized
of uprooting.” It is an uprooting from the civilized, from in the margin of the installations. The bright, luminous
the comfort of modern life, to move toward otherness and colors, like so many gems, are explained by the saturation
toward the primitive savagery of the mountains. It is an of almost pure pigments, very dense, and pasty, clinging
uprooting from the framing space of the museum, from the to the striations of the smoothed papers. All this gives the
norms of the art world, preferring a virgin place, delimited works a mineral aspect, both refined and raw, similar to the
only by the rocky earth, the water of the lakes, and the clouds reflections of light on the stony soils of Tibet. In addition
of altitude. Finally, it is an uprooting from all the pictorial to this plastic attraction for the substance, the quest for the
traditions of landscape representation. Contrary to the origin is finally read, in the very form of the Flags, which are
Western ways, the artist refuses to “face” the landscape, to a sign toward an extremely distant spiritual experience. For
submit it to the only perceptive conscience, and to make the record, the thangka of Buddhism consists of vast scrolls
it a simple “window opened on the world” . In contrast that are unrolled on walls or rock faces, while the loungta,
[2]
to the Eastern ways, the painter does not reduce himself “horses of breath” hung in the most inaccessible places, are
to being only a vector, and to do as the landscape does. small pennants that are caressed by the wind, which should
Thus, Wang Yiming replaces the black ink of traditional bring supplications to the gods. Wang Yiming intertwines

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2023) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.358