A NOWHERE BODY - NEW PAINTINGS BY WEI DONG (solo)

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About A Nowhere Body - New Paintings by Wei Dong
by Wei Dong

One of my earliest childhood memories was my first trip on a train, sometime during the 1970s. It was already dark when we set out. We were surrounded by a tightly packed, noisy crowd, which quieted down after midnight. Cradling my head on her lap, mother held me and soothed me to sleep. I closed my eyes, listening to the rhythmical murmur of the wheels. I do not know how much time had passed.

I awoke, and realized I had fallen asleep. The seated passengers in the darkened train looked like clay statues in a temple. I didn’t know where I was.

The sense of foreignness terrified me. I felt helpless. Seized by panic, I thought for a moment I was still dreaming. I paused, losing any sense of time. At last, I realized that I was on a train. I got up and looked for my mother, whom I found sitting across from me, fast asleep, leaning on my father. I whispered to her and she took me into her arms. I was sleepless throughout the rest of the night with only the jolting movement of the train and my mother’s arms to keep me company until daybreak.

Ten years later, I woke up and discovered myself in a city called Beijing. Twenty years have passed and I now wake up on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I have no idea where I will find myself a decade from now, but the feeling of each midnight reverie has remained as vivid as that of my childhood memory.

I might as well regard myself as a traveller. Most travellers write down their thoughts in a diary. Where is my diary? Perhaps a painter does not need a diary to record his life, for which his accumulated works serve the purpose. It has been many years since I have dated any completed painting but I am always able to tell the exact date of a particular work when someone asks about it. I can even remember what the weather was like on that particular day, who came to see me, and what was said. As for those works I have deliberately kept with me, often there is nothing particular about them, but it’s just that something unforgettable happened when I created them. My paintings serve as an encrypted diary, not to be shared with others. It would demand a great deal of brainwork in order to solve the puzzle.

From early Ming and Qing style ink paintings to my present passion for vintage costume, I have always been stubborn in choosing the themes for my work. In the eye of the beholder, my work embeds some secret codes, yet for me, they have been a way to guide me home. I know them as well as my own home. When one is on the road for a while, one thinks of going home. After staying at one place for too long, especially at home, one wants to start a long journey. Time after time, this is how I prepare to depart for a journey; my physical body may be here, my mind is already drifting to a faraway place.

This kind of thinking has created a corresponding painting style. Whether it is Oriental or Western, classical or realist, Ni Yun-lin or Balthus, I carefully arrange them as if I were preparing a feast for myself. If it were beyond the comprehension of the beholder, I would not blame them or myself. I have prepared this elaborately adorned banquet for myself, so that I can find a familiar face should I awake amidst unfamiliar surroundings in the darkness of a midnight train. This recurring midnight reverie will always accompany me. Like my physical body, my work belongs neither here nor there, but is on a train speeding through the night.

At home in the USA

Dec, 2012