Painting by Chunqing Huang in Bonn: Like the echo of a fellow artist

At Max Ernst, lianas of yellow, green and brown form a thicket. In Henri Matisse, the pasty orange is reminiscent of the fleshiness of his figures, between the color fields of light blue, dark blue and black. In Marianne von Werefkin, a few dominant black lines frame the color fields like amorphous figures.

The dimensions are always the same: each image measures 30 by 40 centimeters, a concentrated format. And always strictly abstract. Each bears the name of a painter. They are mostly European modern artists that Chunqing Huang took up in her “Painter’s Portrait” series. Plus some Americans and older contemporary colleagues. Leiko Ikemura also appears; the painter's portrait named after her stands out among the other works with its delicate, washed-out colors and shapes.

The August Macke Haus Museum in Bonn is showing “Reflections”, a large solo exhibition by the Frankfurt painter Chunqing Huang. One immediately understands why Friederike Voßkamp, ​​director of the museum and curator of this exhibition, invited Huang to this place. She also builds a contemporary bridge to the work of the expressionist painter August Macke, whose visible manifestations the artist plays across bonds.

Chunqing Huang: “Reflections”. Museum August Macke Haus, Bonn, until January 31, 2027

Ironically, Chunqing Huang first encountered European classical modernist painting on her way to the Beijing Art Academy - she was just about to hand in her portfolio to CAFA, the Central Academy of Fine Arts; one of the most prestigious training centers in the country and the only one under the authority of the Chinese state. She whiled away her waiting time in the Chinese capital in the museum, which was showing Picasso in 1994. A previously unseen painting as an initial spark; It probably also made her want to go to Europe at some point.

Huang, who was born in Heze, China in 1974, belongs to a generation of artists for whom moving from the East to the geographical West (or vice versa) was not a given. At this point in time, China had slowly opened up, but the new, artistic cool of today was still out of the question. In 2000 she applied to study at the Städelschule and was accepted. In Frankfurt she studied in the class of Hermann Nitsch, and later also with Peter Angermann and Wolfgang Tillmans. Maximum freedom reminds her as overwhelming and overwhelming, but great.

Today the artist works in a way that could be called conceptual and intuitive. So “Painter’s Portrait” began in 2016 with originally a single image, as a reaction to all the well-known and lesser-known representatives of classical modernism. Huang could only paint if he stopped by the studio - not predictable. In Frankfurt it was initially primarily the painters from the collection of the Städel Museum, which shares a property line with the art academy of the same name. But the Picasso continued to haunt Huang's imagination; he took his time. Franz Marc was the first and Joan Mitchell the penultimate to receive a portrait. Picasso only came at the very end. With him the series was completed in 2023.

The series “En Vogue” is directly opposite the portraits in the exhibition: what is the height of a “Painter’s Portrait” canvas there corresponds to the width of a single brush stroke. Huang moves the diluted oil paint two or three times across the picture surface in a half ellipse. The results are paintings that resemble prints, like a frottage of paint-soaked crepe paper perhaps, or a lithograph. There are considerations about fashion that are presented here in a picturesque way. “I asked myself what is becoming en vogue and why, and what communication processes play a role in it,” explains Huang. In what is now her second, more spacious studio, these pictures of magical simplicity are created, which, although so obvious, do not reveal their secrets. The connection to the appeal of fashion trends is suddenly obvious.

And completely unplanned, because they were begun long before the exhibition, these canvases also appear in bright yellow or orange and rich blue, like an echo of a fellow artist - the decidedly cheerful colors for which the museum's titular August Macke became known. Meanwhile, Chunqing Huang is pushing towards further simplification: the question of how far she can reduce her canvases in order to create paintings.

Even when you look through the camera you can see that of the painter. Two photo series complete the show. Mysterious-seeming photographs, as if taken by a spy camera, turn out to be views of the Art Basel art fair - a chance look through a network at the people below, taken on a single day. Perhaps the unifying factor lies in the exercise that Huang brought with him to Frankfurt from Beijing: artistic freedom comes from variation. Within the limitations of a single series, all possibilities potentially arise.

In Western modernity, the exchange or mirroring, as suggested in the exhibition title, of course worked in the opposite direction. Or both: In the painter's former home next door you can discover a small Buddha - how art and crafts from Africa, especially from Asia, were the inspiration for European modernism. Not necessarily in deep penetration, but often initially in an enthusiasm for their appearance and surfaces. A certain exoticism could be part of it, a naivety, a certainly often incorrect interpretation of the context in which it was created, all of that.

Almost 100 years later, Chunqing Huang records these visible manifestations in order to mirror them again. The artist is concerned with a completely subjective drawing of her impressions: she neither claims to convey a comprehensive nor a generally valid view of her subjects. It is neither a pastiche nor really a homage that she paints here. But it is a strange essence of the visible aspects of that painting.

August Macke also received a “Painter’s Portrait” and the work of the same name was hung in the painter’s former studio next door. And suddenly you are thrown back to the seemingly banal question of what makes a portrait special. It's supposed to capture the person portrayed, of course. But it also provides at least as much information about the portrayer: his/her preferences and expression options, classification categories, perhaps something like painterly intelligence. A priority of the subject over the object always. As an audience, you can share the artist's perspective without ever completely penetrating it.