Wang Shuye

Born in 1963 in Qiqiha’er, Heilongjiang Province. Graduated in 1989 from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts (currently: Central Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University)

After having moved to Japan in 1990, the artist didn’t release any new work. Intent on exploring religious and spiritual thought and profoundly investigating visual art’s methods of expression, the artist spent his time studying in silence and researching in solitude. This period saw the formation of the following essential content: a view of art was established that propounded art’s return to the ideal spiritual realm of making pottery and smelting metal; a non-disparate visual method was formed that deliberately breaks through the visual inertia of distinguishing objects; hereby the concept of “naked space-time” was put forward (i.e. discarding the cloak of disparity by which man uses his differentiating consciousness to demarcate space-time, and instead attending to the naked, non-disparate truth of the spatio-temporal world); a unique pictorial expression was created with which to present the visual method of “naked space-time” (i.e. using oscillating and intersecting brush-strokes to dissolve the differentiation of objective, substantiated silhouettes). The above-described view of art which takes into account mental cultivation; a revolutionary visual approach that challenges existing visual inertia, world views and ideas concerning time-space; as well as innovated modes of visual expression that liberate realistic painting from the plastic idea of depicting objects: all of these have formed into a consistent body of content that – since its conception – has kept on increasing in depth and is repeatedly put into practice throughout the artist’s further creations.

For years running since 2001, the artist has held solo-exhibitions at the Ikeda 20th Century Art Museum (Osaka prefecture), Tokyo Gallery + BTAP and other renowned art institutions. He’s been invited to participate in several influential international group exhibitions. In 2011, the artist was awarded the “TAKASHIMAYA Fine Arts Award”, assigned by the culture fund under the auspices of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In recent years, the artist has begun to expand the scope of his art-related activities in China. He currently resides and works in China and Japan. The artist was instrumental in the launching of the term “Neo-Mōrōism”.