Wang Hou Tang: Kung Fu Ink: Beacon, NY

BEACON, NY – Ethan Cohen Gallery at the KuBe Art Center is pleased to present Wang Hou Tang: Kung Fu Ink, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

The act of creating Chinese calligraphy occupies two dimensions of art, the kinetic and the pictorial. A dance of brushwork releases ink onto paper in a single flow of energy through the brush. Nowhere is this fusion more perfectly embodied than in the practice of Wang Hou Tang, a master and veteran both of calligraphy and Kung Fu. Wang Houtang invites us to value the performative expression of his body and hand movements as a process, itself a visual art form, as much as the resulting inked graphics, themselves a kind of black-on-white narrative dance of characters imprinted on paper. He is in effect pictographing a hypnotic martial arts performance where form follows function.

Beyond the esthetic plane, Chinese metaphysical symbolism informs Wang Houtang's unity of action with inscription. He directs his inner life-force force of Qi to channel divine energy onto and into earthly matter. His is a mystical choreography of creative energy. Wang Houtang argues that his art form transcends mere artistic expression; rather, it offers the visible illustration of transcendent opposites that become harmonies, mind/body, earth/sky, esthetic/mystical, dance/ink. Qi courses through him, reaching from his back to his shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and finally to the pen and ink. With each stroke, Qi merges with the ink, imprinting Chinese characters onto the white paper. This flow of Qi mirrors a series of kung fu movements, calligraphy come to life, denoting imagery of rushing streams, swirling cloudy mists, and the passage of time.

Wang Hou Tang was born in Shandong, China, and is a deeply schooled practitioner of martial arts, literature, and culture. He began learning martial arts at the age of 7, studying under a long tradition of famed masters. Also at the age of 7, Wang Houtang began practicing calligraphy, an artistic discipline he perpetuates of his own family's multigenerational heritage. For the past twenty years, he has practiced calligraphy for four hours a day, three hundred and thirty days a year, accumulating thirty thousand hours. Crafted by hand, his iron brush weighs over 40 pounds, yet under his time-seasoned fingers, it moves with refined fluidity, delivering bold emphatic strokes. Wang Houtang practice takes place on a six-acre plot of land situated in downtown Yantai. There, amid a vibrant landscape of exotic flowers, mountain springs, and tranquil ponds, he has constructed a residence and garden, evoking the surroundings of China's great literati painters of old.