Lot 1608: WHANG INKIE

WHANG INKIE
(b. 1951)
Pla-Mountain 249
signed, dated, inscribed and titled 'Whang Inkie; Pla Mountain 249; 2009' in English; titled and inscribed in Chinese (on the reverse of both panels) plastic blocks on wood panel, diptych
each: 192 x 96 cm. (75 5/8 x 37 3/4 in.)
overall: 192 x 192 cm. (75 5/8 x 75 5/8 in.)
Executed in 2009

Whang Inkie extends deeper than its amusing vista of an Oriental landscape by stabilizing his artistic value of the serene realm of the concept and the naturalness to generate an infinitely transitional landscape that extends beyond the planar continuity to verify the 'naturalness' of his work. Manipulating the intimacy and distance to authoritative effect in appreciating his works, Whang offers a selection of multiple perspectives where the landscape disappears and reappears, forming spatial relationships through a shifting play of shadows, allowing the audience to control the degrees of definition depending on their standpoint. Although Whang may meditate to rein act the abstract quality of traditional landscape paintings as a landscape of the mind by emitting the same essence of its balanced spontaneity and purity of its naturalness; his figurative mode of executing painting also simultaneously echoes on the artificiality of digitized pixels.

The graphic phenomenon of Whang's landscape is utterly technical in its production, despite its finishing aura that is highly abstract and natural. Whang intensifies Pla-Mountain 249 (Lot 1608) as pulsating dots of contrasting plastic block pixels are tighter and mature than usual and perhaps more challenging to our perceptive reflex. Exploiting the fragility of our vision, he shapes a mass ornament of blocks that are formulated cleverly in fabricating a color spectrum that appear monochrome. With the tonal insinuation of green, blue and red that sheen against traditional black ink, the contrasting colors of black against to white blocks, green against red blocks operate to stimulate variable tone of the seemingly black palette. Though typically stiff in its rectangular shape with limited scale of primary colors, Whang redefines plastic blocks by evolving its ability to portray gestural contours and wealth of colors. Utilizing the tendency of plastic blocks that kindle our childhood memories, the audience is subtly directed to read his painting with sensory experience, hence to be absorbed as a scent of memory. The blend of temporal and permanence is allegorically parallel to the process of memory; a concurrence that is further constituted by the constructive and deconstructive qualities of plastic blocks. Its capability to compartmentalize yet to rebuild or re-enact, and to be mass produced are all conscientiously grasped by Whang as a significant medium in depicting the natural and artificial, new and old, East and West and light and dark, where he is able construct a multi-functional or moreover multi-conceptual landscape that is polished with his pledge to exhibit his belief in the purpose of art to evoke an aesthetic experience.