Wang Wu: Self-Grown

A black mountain rises through a field of white cuts. Its slopes are built from marks that split, narrow, and gather into darker masses. At the bottom of the print, a seated Buddhist figure occupies only a fraction of the mountain's height.

The work is part of Wang Wu's Self-Grown, now at New Sin Pin Pier in Kaohsiung. Wang describes making and exhibiting art as a way to organize what she is learning. The different ways she cuts, draws, writes, and handles paper remain visible in the room.

Another print brings the scale down to a face. An elder holds a dish close to the body. The features are cut densely, with the gaze turned aside. A small oval portrait appears inside the larger image. Beside the frame, a folded white object projects from the wall.

Wang has returned repeatedly to the study of Taiwanese folk art. She writes about the force and plainness she found in the hands of farmer-artists. She later brought more direct handwork and cut-paper collage into her woodcuts.

In a third work, a large fish passes above two fields of waves. Its scales are compact and regular; the water beneath it changes from broad white arcs to a darker mesh of short cuts.

One work is dominated by orange. Two large characters, 勝利, fill the upper field. Below them, a figure stands among flowers and dark leaves. Wang copies characters every day and treats knife work as an extension of brush and ink.

Wang says the socialist history of printmaking sustains her belief in drawing from life and in realism. Her insistence on observation belongs to that history as well as to her current practice.

The exhibition takes its title from Wang's favorite Nanguan zhitao piece. When she first encountered the music, she heard its length and repetition. With longer listening she found elegance, entanglement, and what she describes as inexhaustible vitality. She hopes her practice can also continue for a long time and change through what she learns.

Five works hang with generous space between them in New Sin Pin Pier's first-floor room: the mountain, elder, fish, calligraphy, and one more dark image.