Chinese painter Wang Tao has his first exhibition at Cynthia-Reeves gallery in New York with a select series of his signature acrylic and collage works on canvas. Tao looks to China’s culture and history as his subject and as he incorporates universally recognizable Chinese motifs such as dragons, birds on branches, clouds, and mountains his rich palette follows in the footsteps of Chinese lacquer and ink scroll painting. To create the textured and evocatively textile-like surface, Tao begins by affixing a decoupage of vintage book leaves from the Qing Dynasty and Early Republic Period (1912 – 1949). The book pages and written text serves as the background, on which Tao adds layers of acrylic paint, building up the surface texture and developing the visual motifs. Rather than appropriating lauded 20th century works from Western cultures, as has been repeated seen in Contemporary Chinese painting, Tao looks to China's culture and history as his subject.
