Ling Glacier

Author: Leng Bingguan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: I don’t buy calendars—it’s not that I don’t like them, but I often forget to flip through them. The previous year, I saw Leng Bingguan’s woodcuts printed as a calendar at the Sanlian Bookstore in Beijing and bought it on the spot, hanging it on the west wall of my studio in New York. When the month arrived, I would remember to flip to the next page, admiring how the beautiful naked girl on one page would stretch her body or change poses while lying on a chair or among flowers. This book mainly collects Leng Bingguan’s paintings, including works such as Floral Wounds of the Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Song of Songs, No. 2. How could such a sight ever exist in daily life. We are merely awake in daydreams, and Leng Bingguan is the director of these dreams. Daydreams are often a hint of eroticism. The heroine in Leng Bingguan’s black-and-white woodcut series is somewhat suspected of inciting mild eroticism. In that picturesque landscape, is there really a girl hiding? She is actually just a spot, formed by the subtle avoidance of intersecting lines, a convenient arrangement to balance density and spacing, and the author’s strategic move.