ART-PRESENTATION: Shen Wei-Painting in Motion

Dancer, choreographer, painter, and filmmaker Shen Wei moves fluidly between disciplines and cultures to create art that expresses a common spirit animating the world around us. His theory of dance seeks to align the energies inside and outside the body, approaching the body and its environment as fundamentally interconnected. As a painter, Shen Wei uses the monumental scale of the canvas to create immersive visual environments that evoke ancient Chinese landscape paintings while enlisting the drips and gestures of twentieth-century abstraction.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archive

“Painting in Motion” a single exhibition in three parts, is the first exhibition in the U.S.A. to present the range of Shen Wei’s work. Shen Wei’s recent paintings, including two works he created as an Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner Museum, are on display along with notebooks, sketches, and documentation of his choreography that provide insight into his evolution as an artist. Born in Hunan in 1968, Shen Wei grew up during the political and social upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) in China. He began formal opera training in 1978 at age nine. Involving dance, acrobatics, voice, and acting, Chinese opera was Shen Wei’s earliest experience in multidisciplinary approaches. Following a tour of China performing with the Hunan Opera, Shen Wei received a scholarship to the Guangdong Modern Dance Academy in 1989 and, shortly after graduating, he cofounded the first modern dance company in China. During these early years, he simultaneously pursued a solitary, intense practice of painting. Shen Wei moved to Brooklyn in 1995 for a scholarship at the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance and immersed himself in the cultural life of New York City. He soon turned his attention to film and worked in several media throughout the 1990s. Expanding into directing and stage production, Shen Wei founded Shen Wei Dance Arts in 2000. His paintings and theories of dance began to merge during this period. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007 for his innovative work and gained world fame with his choreography for the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. Over the past decade, Shen Wei has continued to move fluidly between painting, music, film, and dance with performative installations, abstract paintings, and multimedia dance productions. He explored these practices as an Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during the summer months of 2018 and 2019. Today, Shen Wei lives and works in Paris. Shen Wei uses the interaction of different painting materials (oil, acrylic, and ink) and techniques (brushstrokes and drips) to create shifting forms that evoke natural elements. The blank space between the mountainous forms provides a tranquil pause. It also causes us to question what we are seeing. Beginning in 2017, Shen Wei reintroduced color into his painting, using icy blues, aquamarine washes, and pale yellows to create a sense of calm tranquility suspended in time and space. During this period, Shen Wei paused in his work with Shen Wei Dance Arts to devote himself to painting alone in his studio. These concentrated moments of solitude yielded contemplative, ethereal imagery that seems almost weightless. Shen Wei produced the two vertical canvases in this series, “Suspension in Blue Numbers 6 and 7” during his residency at the Gardner Museum. Here, blue and white strokes ascend against a colored expanse, as if we are witnessing a celestial transfer of energy.

Photo: Shen Wei, Suspension in Blue Number 1, 2017-2020, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 91 x 152 cm, Photo: Inès Leroy Galan, © Shen Wei, Courtesy the artist and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Info: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston, Duration: 3/12/2020-20/6/2021, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-17:00, www.gardnermuseum.org