Through the ancient into the present

Foreword

What matters is how deeply the artist is connected to the world — how much of it he can perceive and comprehend. Xiaochuan does not paint beauty for beauty’s sake, nor does he paint merely for decoration. For him, “Reading the Ancient” is a way of examining his own place in the world, measuring how much weight one can truly bear within existence. And “Delighting in the Present” belongs to the viewer as much as to the artist: it is the courage to face the winds of our time, to let go of fixed forms and attachments, and to quietly await the future within the flow of time. To “delight” is not surrender, but a posture of resistance.

Borrowing the words of a friend:

I shout at the autumn wind, chew dry grass, bite snow, drink the northwest wind, and then swallow the southeast wind.

— Wang Chunchen

Wang Chunchen is an art historian, curator, and critic — Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Deputy Director of the CAFA Art Museum. His research focuses on modern art history and contemporary art criticism.