Peng Wei’s works conceal multiple kinds of spaces, and the interactions between these spaces and viewers are often faster and more direct than the images that present them. The grand scrolls in Old Tales Retoldpush viewers a dozen meters away—those long arcs descending from the ceiling are akin to Richard Serra’s metal sculptures rendered in paper.The Small Paintings in European Picture Framesseries pulls viewers in closer, so close that they almost want to cross the boundary of the frame to look for cut off or concealed images.The Buddha’s hand citrons in Material Worldstill seem to be shrinking, and they will invariably end up as specks of dust. Seven Nights and Hi-Ne-Nirestore the conventional viewing distance, no longer compelling viewers to be aware of the presence of their bodies.

       These different scales, proportions, and distances, as well as the consciousness and unconsciousness they embody, turnworks united by a title into self-sufficient series. Their creative motivation and anticipated effect do not have to rely on the harmony or tension between the series; what determines their internal logic is their one-on-one relationship with the artist.When shown in the same exhibition, they collectively present an extraordinary opportunity.When every series is appreciated individually in a more natural setting, they spontaneously capture a time and space for looking, starting in an appropriate place and ending at an appropriate moment.

       However, as with many retrospective or semi-retrospective exhibitions, this opportunity for concentrated viewing is rare and precious,because it shows the multiple connections between the artist and her work, but it also inspires us to think about these interconnections on a deeper level. In the end, all of these series—from objects just a few centimeters high to scroll installations dozens of meters high—come from the same artist’s interior space. This interior space encompasses the artist’s knowledge and training, emotions and thoughts,pursuits and creations. The viewer’s curiosity about the artist eventually leads to the construction of this space, because this is the “gene pool” for her artand the origin ofherdiffering concepts and visions. The starting point for the exploration of interior space is the space outside the work—the externalization of interior space.

       When we consider this and reflect on the observations that began this essay, we see thatthe multiple spaces in Peng Wei’s work reveal the diversity of her ways of thinking. However, one thread runs through these series; whether the works are large or small, three-dimensional or two-dimensional, they begin and end with women, or more precisely, they convey Peng’s era-spanning dialogues with women from the past.She is not pursuing real or fictional female types; she is responding to or remolding these types. Thedifferences between them are rather fine, so more explanation is required.

       At different historical moments, Chinese culture has created female charactersin text and image. They often had first and last names, and were even given long biographies, but they could not avoid the pitfalls of categorization. In the Western Han period, Liu Han paved the way with Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienüzhuan), which divided more than one hundred women into seven types, from “Matronly Models”to“Depraved Favorites.”Even Buddhist women outside the Confucian tradition could not avoid this logic; they also became models and prototypes, and in this process, any trace of truth that may have once existed was watered down. As time passed, this tradition, which blended art and ethics, fosteredtwo opposing yet complementary veins of logic: one takes aim at the categories to create contemporary versions, presenting a continuous line of female models, and the other takes the categories as fodder for deconstruction,creating individualized figures with a cultural foundation. In the former case, there are too many examples to count—they fill volumes of historical biographies and family lineages. However, there are very few examples of the latter—the Twelve Golden HairpinsinDream of the Red Chamberandthe fox spirits in Strange Tales from the Chinese Studio (LiaozhaiZhiyi),which come from types but will always be the individual creations of Cao Xueqin and Pu Songling.

       The “women martyrs” in Peng Wei’s Old Tales Retold—a modern miswriting of the character for “exemplary women”—are outstanding examples of this kind of second-level creationin contemporary art. These images of women were produced from Ming-dynasty illustrations in Paragons of Feminine Virtue, but this reference is not important for understanding this series. What is important is that these model women, who were categorized two thousandyears ago, have finally been extracted from a context in which they injured themselves out of filial piety and magnified into independent individuals who are“larger than life.”Their perseverance and dedication are no longer held up as examples; they inspired in Pengarespect and admiration for them that far exceeds sympathy. The rough, direct modeling in ink adds to the simplicity and power of the paintings, a departure from the fine ink sensibility of recent painters. Supposedly, all of this would be impossible without brush and ink, but what’s important is that Peng Weihas taken back her own exemplary womenthrough these images. On this level, she followed the precedents of Chen Laolian’sThe Water Margin Playing Cards(ShuihuYezi) andVenerating Antiquity Playing Cards (BoguYezi); it’s simply thatno one created these monumental paintings on paperin Chen’s time.
The violence inParagons of Feminine Virtueinspired the heroism inOld Tales Retold, and the historical dialogues in Wild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beachseem to refer to Ming-era literary sketches (xiaopin) that originated from Song ci poetry. (This last series was not shown in the exhibition, but I think it is necessary to discuss it, in order to understand Peng Wei’s creative logic.) I say“seems to”because these meaningful little paintings are not based on a clear original. The corresponding painted medium for this style of Song poem is the fan or album leaf; the fishing boats on misty waters or beautiful women looking at the moonin these smaller paintingsare like visualized songs, where the rhythm moves between presence and absence. All of this entered intoWild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beach, but even the profoundly emotional poetic painters like Ma Yuan and Xia Gui never depicted solitary men or women singing in landscapes. It wasn’t until the rise of brothel culture in the Ming dynasty, which took root and sprouted in Chinese culture independent from the concept of “feeling” in traditional ethics, that the art of feeling finally bloomed and bore fruit. Gifted scholars and beautiful ladies entered painting, but they more often occupied woodblock prints. However, Wild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beachis permeated with a still silence, which is rare in Ming paintings or prints. The series once again brings us back to Chen Laolian, but his lonely, silent men and women are much heavier than the figures inWild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beach.

       As a result, Wild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beachand its historical dialoguesare different fromthose in Old Tales Retold. The latter has a clear antithesis, while the former travels through, investigates, absorbs, and deviates from multiple traditions. However, the presence of the artist in these two seriesis clear at a glance; it’s just that her presence takes different forms. The monumentality of Old Tales Retold directly announces her presence,while the seemingly placidWild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beachpresents a more conceptual challenge to the conventional. The unrelated paintings are paired with seemingly unrelated texts that come from seemingly unrelated foreign writers and musiciansand their seemingly unrelated times and places. The words and picturescorrespond and diverge, while also inviting and rejecting viewers who attempt to enter Peng Wei’s own realm, which shedefines.

       This sentence could also describe myfeelings about Seven Nights. It’s another invitation and rejection, but these positive and negative directionshave more power. This push and pull give this set of seemingly ordinary line drawings a special psychological tension. We are drawn into the many scenes in every painting, wanting to know what is happening. We also want to uncover narrative threads and hidden symbolism—the way that every art history textbook teaches us to look at paintings. However, Seven Nightsquestions this method; it seems that the more you try to understand it, the more you miss the point, and the more you miss the point, the more you are drawn in to discover the secrets in the painting. There is no shortage ofstimuli for interpretation. The architectural spaces, seemingly drawn with a ruler, provide settings for various activities, and the repeated appearance of certain figures implies the passage of time.Dramatic events concealcause and effect, and sly gazes suggest the relationships between characters. The issue arises when you lose that thread. It’s like walking in a magical forest;every path that suddenly appears will quickly vanish, but every time you get lost, the forest becomes more charming. Why is that?The paintings come from dreams, so are we drawn in bythe unique shifts between the dreams, rather than the stories of the dreams?Has Pengconcentrated on maintaining the formal vocabulary of narrative painting, but abandoned the goals and expectations of this art form? Doesshe unearth a women’s space on a psychological level,which male viewers must learn how to perceive? Regardless of the reason, the attraction of these paintings proves their efficacy as works of art, particularly because we are unable to weave a story that dovetails perfectly for them.

       I want to end this discussion with one more series, because it isPeng Wei’s newest work, both in terms of the time and logic of their creation. In My Dreamsfeatures a series of female spirits from literature,mostly fromStrange Tales, but there’s also SuXiaoxiao fromMemories of West Lake(XihuShiyi). Their narrative language connects with Seven Nights, and the album leaf dimensionsand correspondence between text and image also echoWild Geese Descending on a Sandy Beach. Seven Nights was produced from the dreams shared between Peng Wei and a friend, and this body of work sprang froman interaction between women in the real world—her discussions and correspondence with Judith Zeitlin, an academic who has spent many years researching images of female spirits in literature. As a result, we feel the multiple layers emergingwhen we savor the resonance between pictures and images inIn My Dreams. I was particularly touched by the text accompanying SuXiaoxiao—a passage from a letter that Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote to Sergei von Shtein:
 
The only good moments are when everyone goes out to dinner to a tavern or goes to the theater, and I listen to the silence in the dark living room. I always think about the past, it’s so large and bright. Everyone here is very nice to me, but I don’t like them.
We are such different people. I am always silent or crying, crying or silent…[1]
 
SuXiaoxiaowrote:
 
       I ride in the lacquer-painted carriage,
You ride on the blue-grey buckskin horse.
Where should we tie our love knot?
Under the pine and cypress trees of Xiling.[2]
 
 
 
References
 
Akhmatova, Anna. My Half Century: Selected Prose,edited by Ronald Meyer. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1992.
 
Berg, Daria.Women and the Literary World in Early Modern China 1580-1700. New York: Routledge, 2013.