ABOUT THE ARTIST

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Wang Wusheng is a Chinese artist and photographer from Anhui Province in China. He currently works in Shanghai and Tokyo.

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He graduated from Anhui University's School of Physics. As a student he read all the books he could find, not only Chinese literature but Russian and Western as well.

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Beginning in 1973, Wusheng worked as a photographer for a news magazine in Anhui Province, the Anhui Newsphoto and Pictorial.

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In 1974, he started shooting Mounts Huangshan in Anhui. 

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In 1981 he came to Japan where he has lived for 30 years. He became a research member at the Japan Foundation in 1983. He studied at the Art Institute of Nihon University in Japan as he won grant from the Japan Foundation’s endowment for Japanese art studies. In Japan he made friends with haiku poets and Zen aesthetes. Beginning in 1986, he studied for three years at the Tokyo Arts University.

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In 1990, he moved to the United-States, spent a year in New York and in the 90s his career blossomed at last. In 1998, Wang Wusheng held a solo exhibition titled Himmelsberge at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was the first exhibition of photography and the first personal exhibition for a living artist at the museum. Then in 2005, the Permanent Missions of China and Japan to the United Nations presented Spirit of the East, a two-person exhibition of Wang Wusheng’s photographs along with paintings by the late Japanese master artist Kaii Higashiyama, in the United Nations General Assembly’s Visitor’s Lobby. This exhibition was held in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.  

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Wang Wusheng’s photographs are represented in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in Berlin, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, National Art Museum of China in Beijing, Shanghai Art Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, in Russia, United States, and Ukraine.

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Style

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Born and raised in the foothills of this dramatic landscape, Wusheng possesses a deep emotional engagement with his subject. His photographs recall his early memories, as well as traditional Chinese ink drawings of mountains, sky, and clouds. For Celestial Moutains he captured the mysterious sense of infinity of Mount Huang, fascinated by its granite peaks emerging from an ever-changing veil of clouds which inspired most glorious Chinese painters. He records the changeable charm of Mount Huangshan in all seasons and at various times of day.

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Wusheng has sought to portray Mount Huangshan in his own way, expressing his "inner worlds" through this scenic wonder. He says: "These mountains are not mountains, they are the mountains of my mind, they are Qi, black, grey and white balanced to be energy". Through illustrating the stark contrast between sky and earth while capturing the intense luminosity of the clouds, Wusheng explores utopian visions that are both enigmatic and ethereal. 

 

 

Selected Exhibition

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1988    “Visions of the Tranquility of Mount Huangshan” Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo

1995    “Verve of Mt. Huangshan” Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

1998    “Himmelsberge” with Herny Moore’s Exhibition Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

2000    “Celestial Mountains” Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo

2005-   “Spirit of the East” with Kaii Higashiyama, United Nations, New York, 

2006  Higashiyama Kaii Memorial Hall, Ichikawa, Japan

2013    “Celestial Realm” Barry Friedman Ltd, New York

2014    “Celestial Realm” Brucie Collections, Kiev