For many years, people seem to have grown accustomed to leaving aesthetic judgment to established traditions and experience. Thus, when confronted with Wang Xieda’s sculptures, they are often struck with surprise and bewilderment. His sculptural works sweep away the delirious mutterings of vulgar realism and aesthetic insularity. They seem to possess a primordial, lyrical soul, giving voice to an exquisite and highly original resonance. The origins of these sculptures might perhaps be traced to Modernism, Constructivism, or Surrealism, yet they transcend all of them. Wang dismantles these influences and reconstructs them anew, permeating them with an ineffable spiritual tonality. No one sculpts quite like Wang Xieda—not merely in form, but in temperament. His sensibility is distinctive, intriguing, and impossible to imitate.
Rodin famously wrote in Art that “all great artists explore space.” The creation and command of space is perhaps the quality that most fully embodies the value of Wang Xieda’s sculpture.
Space manifests itself in depth and breadth; volume cannot exist apart from space. In Wang Xieda’s sculptures, linear materials are frequently employed in his exploration of the construction of open space. Curved lines are intimate and restrained; straight lines are assertive and rigid; triangular lines are stable yet penetrating. As lines intersect and connect, their various contrasts are extended to the fullest, and everything is transformed into space. Every line, every form, and every inch of texture becomes a constituent element of space.
We might imagine each of his lines as an object slowly and meticulously caressed by the hand. Beginning with the living essence of life itself, with a primal experience, he handles these lines with flexibility and vitality. The volumes constituted by the lines turn within space, while space unfolds around the lines, until volume and space become an integrated whole. Confronted with lifeless strips and blocks of metal, Wang Xieda intensifies space and purifies volume, endowing them with living substance. Behind the lines, planes, and masses, one senses a full and vital presence.
This is an illusory space, a space that can only be felt. Yet it is also a space that truly exists, a space that asks to be touched with the heart.
All of this arises from Wang Xieda’s distinctive way of seeing—from his particular understanding of the sense of reality and of sculpture’s occupation of space. His perception of objects is incorporated into geometric frameworks of form, transformed into slender, eroded lines, finely articulated undulations, and surfaces that may be smooth or rough. These qualities heighten the formal resonance of the work and allow light to interact more richly with form, thereby powerfully opening up an expansive spatial field.
The forms he creates are less abstract signs than mysterious, virtualized spaces. They depart from traditional sculpture’s emphasis on mass and awaken in the viewer an entirely new psychological experience of space.
The existence of the artist transcends instinct, and in Wang Xieda we find this confirmed once again. In his sculptures, he breaks free from the confines of naturalism, discarding and stripping away trivial structures and increasing the distance between the work and objective appearances. The resulting effect of estrangement between viewer and work provides the viewer with a space for imagination.
In this way, Wang emphasizes existence and the meaning of existence, approaching an inner reality that ultimately becomes a way of contemplating life itself. This reality is not a representation of the object but a subjective expression; it is not merely that which “is,” but “Being” itself. It is a world experienced inwardly, yet at the same time it is undeniably an external world. This represents a height that Wang Xieda has attained in his creative practice.
Laozi said: “The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth; the named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Thus, ever without desire, one observes its mystery; ever with desire, one observes its manifestations. These two emerge together but differ in name. Together they are called the mysterious. Mystery upon mystery—the gateway to all wonders.”
Husserl, meanwhile, wrote in his phenomenology that every person, insofar as one considers the world from the standpoint of the self, becomes aware that the world extends infinitely in space and changes infinitely through time; this is at once an immediate discovery and an immediate experience. At this level, ancient Eastern philosophy and modern Western consciousness converge.
Wang Xieda’s sculpture shares an essential affinity with the traditional Chinese art of calligraphy—not only formally, but also in the underlying logic of philosophical thought. Although “calligraphic expression” has always been a prominent characteristic of traditional Chinese art, it has long since become a universal artistic language.
Wang Xieda’s sculpture abstracts and transforms the primordial spirit of things into various configurations of calligraphic lines. He uses the dynamic force of brushstrokes to generate the dynamic force of form. These forms carry intimations of life, while the trajectories of his spirit flow freely through them.
As Shitao wrote in his theory of the “Single Brushstroke”: “This single stroke encompasses all beyond primordial chaos.” Through his use of calligraphic lines, Wang Xieda brings his sculpture to a state in which the primordial vital energy of Heaven, Earth, and nature merges with the vital energy within himself.
This may also be understood as a transformation from tradition into the context of contemporary art. Such a transformation necessarily involves a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, fusion and sublimation, of a pluralistic aesthetic spirit—first moving from the outside inward, and then from the inside outward—until it is ultimately materialized and externalized into visible form. What is meant by “from the outside inward” and “from the inside outward”? The former is an act of absorption; the latter, an act of return. And once it has been returned, a qualitative transformation has already taken place.
I have no intention of investigating why Wang Xieda chose to give his creative theme the title Sages’ Sayings. But it seems to me that perhaps the title signifies his work’s persistent pursuit of the meaning of life, its search for a spiritual home, its ultimate humanistic concern, and its apprehension of the realm of Heaven and Earth—all qualities associated with Confucian thought.
Or perhaps he sees himself as a certain kind of “sage,” concealing deeper meanings within his works and dispensing aphorisms and maxims to the world. Yet whichever interpretation one chooses may ultimately be beside the point, and perhaps it is not important at all. Different viewers will arrive at different understandings, each finding an interpretation of their own. Indeed, this may be precisely what reveals in his work that “mystery upon mystery” which constitutes “the gateway to all wonders.”
Speaking of Sages’ Sayings also brings to mind a passage from Confucius. In Book Six, “Yong Ye,” of the Analects, Confucius says: “When substance exceeds refinement, one becomes uncultivated; when refinement exceeds substance, one becomes merely polished. Only when refinement and substance are harmoniously combined does one become a junzi.”
This seems remarkably apt as a characterization of Wang Xieda himself. His sculptures likewise achieve wenzhi binbin—a harmonious balance between refinement and natural substance.
Gong Yunbiao
Xiyun Studio, Shanghai
March 2009