丁雄泉

This work is in good overall condition as viewed. Framed, under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

“With him, nature and beauty seem in harmony. We just see a piece of paper, but he can make a fantasy come alive wonderfully. His paintings are real life on paper and maybe even the universe is there too.” - Hwang Yu-ling¹

Walasse Ting was an artist, poet and provocateur. Born in China but based largely in New York and Amsterdam, he lived and travelled in over three continents across his lifetime. His favourite subjects to paint were women and flowers; his poetry revolved around women, sex and anguish. Walasse Ting lived as he worked: in a world full of dramatic expressions of emotion, seizing each moment as it presented itself to him.

This Walasse Ting piece is incredibly rare: the artist has few works on this level of ambition so crammed with objects impregnated with meaning. On the table, we see a fishbowl, flowers, fruit and a cage of two parrots. As we ascend to the top half of the work, we see rectangles of scenes, perhaps his own paintings hung from a wall, serving as voyeuristic windows into other worlds.

In this light, perhaps we could interpret this world as a deeply psychological still life of his mind. The excessiveness and exuberance of colour is typical of Walasse Ting’s oeuvre, perhaps inherited from the Fauvists, but in this instance might also indicate the vitality and motion contained within his mind. The scenes on the wall represent his paintings, but also chronicle various points in his life – fictional or otherwise.

 The paintings of women with flowers are characteristic of his work when he was living in Amsterdam, marking his long-held obsession with womanhood and nature. We also see three long-bearded men on horses wearing robes and putou hats, an indication of their scholarly stature in the era of the Tang Dynasty. In doing so, he is connecting himself to a long lineage of scholarly polymath junzi from the Tang Dynasty, a statement of his deference to his cultural heritage. This heritage is also reflected in the style of his painting: his brushstrokes, while seemingly childlike, contain an undeniable calligraphic quality, and he always painted on rice paper, lending his works a translucent ambiguity and a clarity of brushstroke nearly impossible to achieve on watercolour paper or canvas.

Walasse Ting rejects Western linear perspective in favour of a simple indication of depth as height on the composition. The horizon between wall and floor is collapsed as he blurs the boundaries between what is hanging from a wall and what is on the table, as even the differentiations of colour between table and wall slowly fade away. On the rightmost vertical quarter of the composition, these multitudinous paintings begin appearing on what is seen as the table itself: a square of cherries sits upon the darker blue that is meant to denote a horizontal surface. As he does in real life, Walasse Ting’s humour shines through, subverting our expectations in playful visual puns.

Walasse Ting lived across the world and found parts of himself everywhere he went. In New York, he shared a studio with Sam Francis and found abstraction that would influence the method of his painting. In Amsterdam, he solidified his signature treatments of painting women. But through it all, he never forgot the influence that growing up in Jiangsu province had on the rest of his storied, vibrant life.

¹ Quoted in Yves Rivière, Walasse Ting, Paris, 1988.