Zhuhai-based artist
2 min readAn Dong
Oil artist and Director of the Exhibition Department of Zhuhai Museum; an outstanding representative of the China’s ‘Shu Xiang” Art Movement in its later stage.
In April 2007, 120 artworks by Zhuhai-based artist, An Dong, were presented at the Fukuoka Art Museum in Ohori-Koen Park blessed with beautiful waters and greenery, and left visitors holding their breath in deep concentration-and awe. With a proud collection including works of artists representing 20th century art, such as Miro, Dali, Chagall, Warhol, Delvaux and Brancusi as well as Japanese masters of modern Vestern-style painting, it took the museum three years of observation to send the invitation letter to An Dong. The artworks of An Dong encapsulate the quintessence of Chinese characters and reject the constricting fences of the”Orient” context, pointing directly at the dream-like, yet overwhelming essence of modern art, the museum representatives commented.
Born in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, An Dong felt directionless after graduation from Guangxi Arts University. He uprooted himself by moving from the dry heat of the northwest to settle down on the balmy coasts of Zhuhai, a city he calls “open enough for me to communicate freely with the world” and “quiet enough for me to concentrate on my whimsy”.
An Dong describes his Zhuhai years as the start of steering his artistic gaze from his “red, wild northwest character” to his “blue abstractionism”. On the breezy coasts, the man’s soul was set free. He finally found his own “language” and has been holding fast to it ever since; and the city’s artsy milieu makes him relaxed and always inspired 1999 was a defining, “epiphany”year for An Dong. During a trip to France that he recalls as”a spiritual typhoon that swept his soul”, his inner tangle suddenly defused into revelation about the elusive charm and modernity of “abstractionism”. The realization came like a fresh wind, putting the spring back in his step. Back in Zhuhai, he switched his artistic focus from oil creation to ink and calligraphy, pursuing the “truth” of art for the next 15 years.
The conception of “Chinese characters” is reconstructed into a new “world language”, or a broader theme of universality, that generates unique responses in viewers from all cultures.
