Chen Weinong (born in 1962 in the province of Zhejiang, China) is a contemporary artist who combines in his work abstract art techniques and the traditions and philosophy of Chinese painting.
Chen Weinong was born and spent most of his life in China. He received his education at the National Academy of Fine Arts, which, among other things, provides one with a profound knowledge of the history of art, which in the national tradition is indissolubly bound up with philosophy and religion. However symbolic and strict the foundations and rules of Chinese painting are, one of its major principles, formulated in the 5th century and still honored to this day, is the presence of a spiritualized rhythm of animate movement in paintings. It is this rhythm, which reminds us now of the swell of the ocean, now of sunrays breaking through the clouds, now of the interplay of shadow and light on the ground and the wall of a house, that Chen Weinong’s works are filled with.
Chen Weinong first came to Europe in 2001. Back then, the artist, who had deeply imbibed the traditions of the school of national painting and attained mastership in working with ink and brush, began to explore new opportunities for expressing things through art, get into the spirit of a different atmosphere, and learn certain things anew. Chen Weinong confesses that he has understood that in order to become a contemporary artist he needs to go beyond the traditions of national art. He acknowledges that a contemporary Chinese artist needs to have a profound knowledge of Chinese classic culture and diligently practice traditional art forms and realizes that in order to make his works appealing and understandable not just to his compatriots he needs to constantly search for new language and forms to express his sensations.
Ten years and change later, Chen Weinong’s style is talked about as one that has formed and become recognizable. You can tell the artist’s ethnic background and his penmanship as soon as you look at his works. Having said that, these are not lines of unknown symbols, as hieroglyphs look to most of those who do not know the language. Taken deliberately large, his rhythmic ink strokes from a sign's components become part of a landscape or an abstract composition. They call Chen’s style calligraphic expressionism or abstractionism Chinese-style, finding in it a convergence of abstract art and traditions of Chinese painting. The artist’s primary materials are still paper and ink, but he does not quite always work in traditional ways – for instance, he puts strokes on the sheet standing over it, as Jackson Pollock used to do (critics compare Chen Weinong specifically to Pollock – and to Kandinsky). Symbols in his interpretation simultaneously break free of a past sense and get filled with a new one, while the artist, being under the influence of Western art, himself influences the West at the same time. One of his series is called “Between Calligraphy and Painting”. Speaking of this series and his works in general, Chen Weinong says of himself: “I am an artist, a Chinese artist, but, above all, I am a genuine calligrapher,” noting: “The Chinese believe that painting and calligraphy have the same roots”.