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Opening Reception Date and Time: May 5th, 6-8pm
Chambers Fine Art New York is pleased to announce the opening of 3,720: Recent Works by
Wang Tiande on May 5, 2011. This will be the artist’s third solo-exhibition with the gallery.
Wang Tiande is best known for the ongoing Digital Series in which traditional Chinese themes
executed in brush and ink are overlaid with translucent sheets in which the forms are created by
cigarette-burn marks. For the current exhibition Wang expands the iconographic range by
incorporating materials related to his recent interest in literature. In March 2009 Wang was
visiting artist at the University of Kansas and often walked back and forth to the Spencer
Museum of Art. Observing people exercising, jogging and walking at different speeds, he
envisioned writing a novel which eventually became the subject of the present exhibition to
which he gave the title 3,720.
Every night after work, the main character in the novel Lin Wai goes for a walk from his home to
a nearby park. One day he counts the number of steps he takes during the walk and discovers
that the number is 3,720. From that day on he tries to repeat the number every time he takes the
walk but as a result of all kinds of unexpected distractions and incidents, he never achieves the
same number again. Wang remarks that his brief novel is a commentary on the uncertainty of
ordinary life, which on its surface consists of repetitive actions but is always subject to
unexpected diversions. During the course of the novel, Lin Wai’s career undergoes a major
change from being a journalist at a state-owned publishing house to an entrepreneur and owner
of a photo studio. The story of Lin Wai can be read as a distillation of the lives of millions of
Chinese citizens, whose lives went through dramatic changes when the country abandoned
socialism as it turned towards a market-oriented economy.
For the current exhibition, one of the galleries is set up as a reading room with chairs where
visitors are encouraged to sit down and read the novel. Ink drawings and preliminary studies for
the novel hanging on the walls of the reading room offer insights into the artist’s thought
processes. In the larger gallery recent examples of his signature landscapes and calligraphic
works will also be exhibited.
Wang Tiande recently received his Ph.D. in calligraphy from the renowned China Academy of
Art in Hangzhou, and is currently Dean and Professor in the Art and Design Department at
Fudan University, Shanghai.
www.chambersfineart.com
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