The following text is the postscript from artist Wang Tiande’s newly published short novel entitled 3,720. This short novel is the point of departure for the series of new works shown at Chambers Fine Art.
 

Postscript

In March of 2009, while I was a visiting artist at the University of Kansas, I often walked back and forth from my house to the Spencer Museum of Art. On the way there, I saw many people exercising, jogging or walking on the hilly path. From that point on I envisioned writing a novel and supplying background material for a scheme, illustrations, and digital series and video work for exhibition.

From the second half of last year up until this past May, I have been busy completing my PhD. dissertation, and thus have postponed all other work. Chambers Fine Art and I have worked together for the past seven or eight years, and Chris had always hoped that I could provide an exhibit during their 10th anniversary year. To me, the timing created a lot of pressure.

The combination of text and image has long been one of the core themes in my work. The background and personality of the main character Lin Wai arose from a virtual state. At the dawning of the 21st century, society’s new career values create a new individual commentary while the Internet’s methods of virtual communication have permanently altered the landscape of emotional understanding and liberation. 3,720 is a novel, literature program, work in ink, and video that embodies the individual’s perceptions of both real and virtual society in a time of uncertainty.

The novel is divided into eleven chapters, with the fourth chapter “Take A Step” and fifth, “Count A Step” serving as the beginning. In all future installations of the exhibition and readings of the text, according to the changes in the story, the exhibition may be viewed from either the left or right, but must be installed in the same fashion each time.

This summer in Shanghai, the temperature regularly exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. One day, while driving on the elevated highway, the instrument panel of my car registered the outside temperature as 43.3 degrees Celsius and I could truly feel the heat outside my window. I spent the entire month of August in my studio, slowly finding the feeling, and it was often evening before the ideas for the story would come to me. In the early stages of writing, the most important element was the plot and its sense of the virtual and real. But during the revision process, I spent considerable effort shaping the story by form instead.

3,720 is my personal attempt to create a background for another new artistic vocabulary, one that reflects our way of life through the interaction between text and moving image, even though I do not know what the next step for this new language might be. The novel’s plot twists and visual style naturally follow the “Take a Step”, “Count a Step” pattern, to share with you in the future…

Shanghai, August 2010
 

More Stories:

Recent Works by Wang Tiande

Chambers Fine Art

Resume of Wang Tiande