Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

“Character Cultivation” Exhibition

June, 2018

"Character Cultivation"

Curated by Peng Feng

BEIJING, 10 JUNE 2018     (text by Lydia Duanmu, Curator.  Translated from Chinese)

In search for the connection between man's spirit and nature's energy, Claps has felt and understood the forces that surround and bind us, which he translates into breathtaking images. Branches caress each other, leaves long for their mates, the musical chorus of the forest converses with the universe. Claps translates all of this with a deep spiritual sentiment, rendering the images in elegant black, white and gold, creating both positive and negative versions. Yin and Yang is revealed, in both real and imagined spaces, and emptiness is translated with the knowing silence of the universe, creating new elements, and transforming the materials into something beyond the image.

Bill Claps is a dual Italian and American New Yorker and a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied painting and art history. As a visual artist, filmmaker and writer, he never lets these titles restrain his deep love of nature. Bill has trekked with his camera to the various corners of the world: the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song in China, the rainforests of Cuba, the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, the Buddhist holy mountain of Emei Shan in Sichuan Provence, Joshua Tree desert in California, the birch forests of New Hampshire, and the aspen forests of Colorado, amongst other places.

Claps' Harvard education shows in his well-structured compositions; his lifelong efforts in learning the martial arts come through in his depiction of straight and proud birch trees; his understanding of Zen gives a balance of Yin and Yang to his artworks; and his dual identities as both American and Italian infuse simplicity into his classic style. Bill reveres the universe and nature and has endowed this reverence with great vitality through his expressive creation and marvelous imagination. All of this comes together in his latest Natural Abstractions series.

Starting with his photographs, which he processes digitally and prints in black and white, Claps then applies a layer of gold foil to the images, utilizing a unique process he developed. This technique recalls the Byzantine gilding practices, updated for the 21st century by combining them with photographic and digital processing technologies.

Claps' works in the Natural Abstractions series are his contemporary interpretations of nature motifs used and repeated by many generations of Chinese landscape painters and printmakers. These works evoke a sense of the brush strokes, musicality and spiritual content of Chinese calligraphy, together with the spiritual evocation of Chinese landscape painting. Taoisit and Buddhist sentiments are evoked through his unique visual language, which invites the viewer to perceive the beauty of invisible spaces. In referencing this history, Claps creates dynamic images that live in balance between figuration and abstraction, expressionism and impressionism.

Over the past 15 years the paintings and drawings of Bill Claps have been presented in almost 100 exhibitions around the world. Many of his works are in public and private collections worldwide. In June 2018 his works will come to China for the first time with the hope of sparking some vivid and metaphysical dialogues.

Lydia Duanmu

Beijing, China