Cyclone Alfred wiped all International Women’s Day events from calendars in Queensland and northern New South Wales, where preparing our houses and pantries for an extended lock down took priority. In the grey days awaiting Alfred’s arrival, the 48 hours of the storm itself—howling and sustained gusty winds, and the ferocious, unrelenting rain—a downpour that continued for days after the main event, I lost track of time, along with electricity and internet. However, Beijing-based Gao Ping’s exhibition, hosted by Vermilion Art for IWD—Between the Shadow and the Soul—stayed with me.
In the brooding surfaces of her paintings, their depths of field, and the flashes of intense colour (surprises, that emerge like sun peeping from behind the darkest cloud), her abstracted assays evoked the existential threats that hovered for the duration of the storm, and into its aftermath. In these days there was both light and dark—we saw the empathy in human nature (in selfless communities and individuals) and the nastiest (opportunistic theft, looting, and over-consumption).
The exhibition title was chosen by curator Dr Luise Guest from Sonnet XVII (1959) by Pablo Neruda. For Gao Ping, the choice expresses Dr Guest’s innate understanding of her paintings, their technical depths and intuitive processes.
Gao told Art Guide, “When I am creating art pieces, I consider the broader themes and finer details, but I allow my brush to move freely without a predetermined destination. The paintings have their own flow. For me, the interplay between the shadows and the light are not just a visual technique but exist by themselves—like the shadows present in the history and memory and the weight of time.”
Her work has been exhibited in Australia since 2012, and internationally since 2000. She is well known in China, with her training grounded in the study of traditional Chinese ink painting, paired with oil painting at the contemporary no.4 Studio, both within the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts (she graduated in 1997). Vermilion Art, who specialize in art from China, have exhibited Gao since 2016, with this exhibition an opportunity to bring her to Australia to engage with audiences directly.
In her work is an almost alchemical blend that draws the viewer deep into a place of exploration, toward an engrossing yet enigmatic understanding of the global and personal complexities with which we wrestle. This exhibition includes Silhouette 3 (2009), which pairs a dark horizon with a shadowy afterimage. Below, a pale form reads as both a human body in motion and a landscape, evoking the changeability of the soul through the span of a lifetime.
Intimacy no. 4 (2023) is dark, a central squatting figure flanked by looming vertical forms, behind one of which a dawning of luminescent sunrise orange suggests hope. Flashes of white and a paler void at the top right of the canvas offer a vista to another place or space. The Temple of Earth (2021) is a landscape, with figures seated on a wall looking into the abyss of dark sea and a mountainous horizon. The surface—the sky, foreground and image—is dotted with the head of a paintbrush, and the palette is smoky, with a moonlit aura in the sky shining to lift the wall visually in an otherwise subdued ambience. Guest writes about Gao’s work in Half the Sky: Women Artists in China (Piper Press 2016), suggesting, “Beneath the darkest shadows is a lightness of spirit.”
Gao seeks to develop an “authenticity” in her work, using often ordinary objects—shoes, still life, bodies and landscapes—to delve into human emotion. She uses three key words to describe her approach: “Deeply, sincerely, freely”, adding that, for her, the painting is driven by a “process of self-reflection and imagination, to have a dialogue with the deeper heart. The painting is translating the philosophical inner contemplations into the canvas.”
The medium is less important than her intuitive approach. She said, “Ink painting as a traditional Chinese artform is deeply embedded in cultural heritage as a medium for the daily artistic expression. I like to use ink painting—it is one of the most engaging and dynamic ways to create. Whether you use oil or ink is a way but not a purpose. Even when working with oil paint I am using a similar approach. The paint becomes a dialogue between control and approaching balance.”
Within these paintings is a spongelike ability to witness and to understand, evoking both uncertainty and hope. Gao observes, “Art is a great channel to share the empathy and understand each other. No matter where we are in the world we experience the same emotions when facing human suffering, illness, disaster or misfortune. These moments confront the essentials of life and cherish the present.”
In terms of celebrating women, she notes, “[Art] is not an easy world for all the contemporary artists: especially for the female artists. We all need to be warrior artists.” That seems as true now as it has ever been.
Between the Shadow and the Soul
Gao Ping
Vermilion Art
On now—9 April
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