WANG TIANDE 王天德 (born 1960, Shanghai) is famous for his Digital/Hou Shan series which are ink paintings on 2 layers of xuan paper enhanced by burn formations. He discovered this style when he accidentally dropped cigarette ash onto a painting he was working on. He has been producing these types of paintings with landscape, calligraphy and stele rubbings enhanced by burning incense (instead of cigarettes) for over 20 years. This deconstruction involves two layers of paper —the bottom xuan is the traditional ink painting while the top is a finer fiber paper with burn marks. The overlapping effect creates a visual and conceptual dimension to every work.
His previous calligraphic works involved planting new grass or having sheep eat grass to form Chinese characters. A graduate of the Chinese Painting Department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, he is now dean and professor at the Art and Design Department at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Wang has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in major galleries and museums such as Alisan Fine Art, Hong Kong, The Palace Museum Fujian and Beijing, Today Art Museum and National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Chambers Fine Art, New York, among others. His work is in the collections of the following major museums – The British Museum, London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Shanghai Museum of Art among many worldwide.
