Art Within Reach

Artist / Miao Tong

Miao Tong, born in Xi'an in 1968, graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1989, and received M.F.A from Kyoto City University of the Arts Graduate School of Fine Arts in 2003, majoring in Japanese painting. Since 2003, Miao has been teaching at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and is currently an associate professor at the Department of Chinese Painting, the deputy director of the Stone Mineral Painting Studio, and a supervisor for master's degree students.

Miao Tong's works are suitable for quiet appreciation. Amid the strange and jagged rocks, between the surging forms, the strange rocks full of folds achieved with the technique of cun reminds one of the ancients’ sleeves or even a mythical realm enshrouded with clouds and smoke.

Miao Tong has studied painting in Japan for nine years, and he has always been interested in the gestures of nature. During the time he traversed, observed, sensed, and sketched his encounters in the forest at the bottom of the mountain. From these intimate and subtle experiences, the artist gradually realized the essential similarities and differences between sketching and working in the studio. Since it was impossible to replace the perception of being outdoors, he integrated the external environment with the perceptible state of mind. He began to make subjective choices for different scenes, allowing the images to be reconstructed and cohered within the scenery.

For Miao Tong, sketching is a creative process that has certain limits and, at the same time, satisfies another psychological dimension. Painting, as it has always been, a game and a trade-off. Later, when he returned to China to teach, his environment changed utterly. Many approaches that embody an emotional connection had to be changed reluctantly because the artist always thought that there was a veil between the leaves depicted and the life lived. Without an appropriate context to convey that sentiment, he had to pause to the "trees" he had spent a lot of time exploring.  After a long hiatus, Miao Tong finally found an opportunity, a chance visit to a garden, Miao began to notice the subtle attraction of gardens. After this, he began to look for gardens, visited them, and portrayed many of them. Moreover, writings such as Making of a Garden and Treaties on Superfluous Things continuously inspired him.

During this experience, Miao Tong realized profoundly that the gardens are a realistic illusion: it conjures the gardener's extravagant desires and fantasies of many natural landscapes. In the gardens of Jiangnan, the map's outer contours are often left blank on the signs introducing the landscape, as if other external distractions were removed. This scene enlightened the painter. Since then, the stones in the garden fascinated Miao Tong. In his images, he is both the architect and artist with a unique talent for rendering a scene - whether it is the texture of the stones, the personification of forms, or the use of natural pigments to paint the colors. Through the subtle method of "painting stone with stone," the artist aims to deepen the material reality of the painting with simple tracings and congenial depictions to experience the great pleasure of an architect and painter in creating a landscape.

As a kind of materiality, the stone is, first and foremost, an embodiment of simplicity and plainness. Looking closely at the stone patterns on Miao Tong's artworks, the artist's brush focuses on depicting the image and the interpretation of the environment. It reveals not only the artist's understanding of materials and substances but also his multi-layered affection, love, and intrigue for the stones. By painting this subject repeatedly, the artist's work conveys an understanding of the culture embedded in it, and his command of the relationship between the materials. The cultural attributes and the humanistic circumstances the stones embody are like mirrors, reflecting Miao Tong's spiritual reference to nature and the self. Behind the quietude, such solitude becomes the clue and key that string together the artist's practice.

Exhibitions

His solo exhibitions and projects include: The 29th Creative Art Exhibition , Tokyo, Kyoto, 2002; The 3rd National Chinese Painting Exhibition, Beijing , 2007; Silver Award at the 5th National Rock Color Exhibition, Beijing, 2007; Meeting on Materials - Chinese Rock Color Painting Invitation Exhibition, Wuhan, Beijing, 2007; Beijing International Biennale,  Beijing, 2010; Dunhuang Imagery - China Japan Rock Color Exhibition (Dunhuang Research Institute), 2010; National Hundred Flowers Award, China National Art Exhibition, Beijing, 2011; The First China Datong International Fresco Biennale, Datong, 2012; Excellent Award at the 4th Today Silk Road International Art Invitation Exhibition, Xi'an, 2017; Chinese Painting Contextual National Teaching Seminar and Creative Works Exhibition of Green and Colorful Landscape Painting in Higher Art Institutions,  Guangzhou, 2017; National Nine Cities Art Exhibition, Shanghai, 2018; Moroccan Chinese Artists Exchange Exhibition, Morocco, 2018; Art Territory Unlimited Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition, Egypt, 2018; Wish Portrait Exhibition of Works by Young and Middle aged Artists, Shanghai, 2018; Wind from the Sea Excellent Works Exhibition at Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, 2019; National Symposium on Landscape Painting Teaching in Higher Art Institutions and Exhibition of Creative Works by Teachers and Students, Kunming, 2019; National Art Exhibition Shanghai Selection Works Exhibition Shanghai, 2019; The 3rd National (Ningbo) Comprehensive Material Painting Biennale, Ningbo, 2020; Shanghai Art Exhibition,  Shanghai, 2021; Art Da Wu Wen West East Invitation Exhibition,  Shanghai, 2021; City Landscape 2021 National Higher Education Art College Landscape Painting Teaching Seminar and Student Creative Works Exhibition, Shanghai, 2021.

courtesy of the artist