A METAPHOR OF THE PAINFUL

Later, when he returned to China, he undertook a new task of building up the Design Department of CAFA, and then the School of Design. He devoted most of his time and energy to the basis teaching of design and the teaching of visual communication, while, at the same time, besides making prints, he also created lots of sketch works and bunch of oil paintings to express his feelings. He works between painting and design, which gives him a ability to plant his personal art expression into public spaces.

When put his characteristics of painting into the history of Chinese contemporary art, the important features of Chinese contemporary art in such a culture interaction era are much more obvious.

The abstract art of western countries, to Chinese artists is a historical experience, and it is also a very difficult question of how to find its new meaning in the context of the development and of China and its culture background. Chinese artists have to find the original point of abstract paintings, only in this way, they won’t be just the succession of tradition and history of the West.

When chose abstract art to express himself, Tan ping has a clearly view towards his culture position. He doesn’t like to be the successor of western abstract art, but to create an abstract art according to time and Chinese characteristics. To a certain extent, his painting can be called “post- abstract art”.

In Tan ping’s works, there are circle-shaped conglomerations spreading on the canvas. Because the space of his work is constructed with color conglomerations, these circle-shaped conglomerations are like floaters in the air, in a certain order, but with a much more free state of spreading of extending, and sometime even left their trace of growing and moving on the canvas.

Obviously, these conglomerations are from Tan ping’s personal experience, which he got from the feeling towards cells he saw in the hospital.

Taking the state of cells as the motivation of his creation, he focus his works on the state of “spreading” and “extending”, and it is also the theme image of his paintings.

During the process of painting, he follows his feeling of “spreading” and “extending”, just like writing unconsciously, converting these emotions into structures and images.

The flat background of his paintings are usually constructed by pure and powerful colors, but at the same time between the theme images and the background, on the contrary, he uses exquisite strokes to make color transition, making the images stick together with the background rather than isolated, as if there are space to breath and growth in between.

Starting from a very specific objects and then express it in an abstract way is a very important feature of Tan ping’s art.

It also remind us that although abstract painting is a traditional language of art form, but under the new culture condition, artists can also create new abstract art form according to the social realities and one’s living experience.

“Spreading” and “extending” are not only rules of cells growth, but also the general rules of the whole world. From this point, Tan ping’s abstract paintings has a connotation of sociology. He starts from a concern of practical world, taking the feeling towards real life and real world as a chance to express himself

however only using abstract language or images as a medium. We can read a real state of life and common experience from his paintings, and also from this point, his abstract paintings is not a simple extension of the West style, or a response to western abstract art at a normal level, but a spiritual and emotional image base on the soil of real life in China, especially the real state of culture situation.

Tan ping tries to use different mediums to express his feeling, and what important is that he is keeping think about philosophy, history and reality while creating art works, in order to make his thoughts more wider.

To the design education and design teaching, he is good at enlighten students with socio-cultural realities, and search design proposition from realities. Sometimes, he even ask the students to do interviews and social investigation, to outspread design propositions into real social environment, giving it a social property, and let student not only to treat design as a functional task but as a sociological thinking.

His thought is always on a level of sociology, thinking about the culture problems in the society, which injects a much wider culture value into art. His abstract art is base on the experience of art history, while at the same time having a close relationship with contemporary art, which made his art an important creation that reflects today Chinese art culture.