Wu Yixun | Myth and Poetic Imagery
伍一洵 | 神话与诗化的意象
要动笔写王彤的画评时，才发觉得自己是在进行一件“貂不足，狗尾续”的事情，尤其是面对王彤这样一位属于天才型和创意不断的画家，我显得力有不逮之感。但允诺在前，而展览在即，也只能勉力完成了。
王彤的画所呈现出来的有众多的不确定性，信息量又太大，其画面的意象和情绪变幻莫测，而且绘画的技巧丰富多样，时而精细入微，时而又有即兴的涂鸦，让人目不暇接。When I finally sat down to write a review of Wang Tong’s paintings, I couldn’t help but feel that I was attempting something of a “dog’s tail to complete a sable coat”—a humble effort unworthy of the task. This feeling was all the more intense given that Wang Tong is a painter of exceptional talent and endless creativity; I simply felt unequal to the challenge. Yet, having already agreed, and with the exhibition fast approaching, I could only do my best to fulfill the task.
What Wang Tong’s paintings present is a multitude of uncertainties. They contain an overwhelming amount of visual information, filled with shifting imagery and elusive emotional undercurrents. His techniques are remarkably diverse—at times executed with meticulous precision, and at others exploding into spontaneous, graffiti-like gestures—leaving the viewer dazzled and breathless.
大致来说，王彤的画具有三个特征：
神话和梦幻一般的意象和表述方式让王彤的画面具有很强的穿越感，在不同的维度与时间上，现实与梦境之中，不停地交集和切换，有如释氏所言的往来无障碍。
修行人士有一种说法：神话貌似虚幻，但比之历史和现实更为真实。而梦境则是潜意识的反馈。
Broadly speaking, Wang Tong’s paintings embody three distinct characteristics:
First, the mythic and dreamlike imagery and modes of expression lend his work a powerful sense of transcendence. His compositions seem to travel across dimensions and time, continuously weaving between reality and dream, intersecting and shifting without pause—much like what is described in Buddhist teachings as the seamless flow between realms, unimpeded by obstacles.
Practitioners of spiritual cultivation often say: myths may appear illusory, but they are in fact more truthful than history or reality. Dreams, meanwhile, are the echoes of the subconscious.unimpeded by obstacles.
王彤在创作时会进入一种自由意识流动的状态，呈现的画面类似庄子学说中那种离形去知，心斋坐忘之境，又或者近于释家所言的破法执我执的效果。而情绪上又是以中国式诗意的悲观主义情感的再现。
王彤在自觉或不自觉中，用线条和色彩记录着他内心的感受和影像。他的画作看似是瞬间完成，但细看之下，又似是苦心孤诣，这是一种天才的直觉能力。
从他一系列连续不断的创作中看，是王彤本人过去感觉经验的积累并联系成自由意识流动的状态，这近似坐禅时的状态，即来不拒，去不留。
王彤本身鲁美国画专业毕业，后又在欧洲浸染多年，使用的是油画的材料，但从他的图式看，他更多的是使用了线条和摒弃西方的透视而采用了平铺的方法展开其画面。
在色彩上，他采取概括和提练的方式，而不是客观的真实。无论在西方还是在中国都无法将他归入任何门派。从语汇和图式都是一个纯粹而独立的个体。
When Wang Tong paints, he often enters a state of freely flowing consciousness. The resulting images resemble the Daoist notion in Zhuangzi of “leaving behind form and discarding knowledge,” or the meditative state of “heart fasting and sitting in forgetfulness.” It also parallels the Buddhist idea of breaking through attachment to form and self. Emotionally, his work embodies a kind of poetically infused Chinese-style pessimism—a quiet, reflective melancholy rendered through imagery.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, Wang Tong uses line and color to record his inner sensations and mental images. At first glance, his paintings may appear to be completed in an instant, yet upon closer examination, they reveal signs of painstaking effort—this is the intuitive power of genius. Judging from his continuous, flowing series of works, his process reflects an accumulation of past sensory experiences, now channeled into a stream of spontaneous consciousness. It is a state not unlike that of Zen meditation: nothing is resisted when it comes, and nothing is held when it goes.
Wang Tong was trained in traditional Chinese painting at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, and later immersed himself in European art circles for many years. Though he works primarily with oil on canvas, his pictorial language shows a preference for expressive linework and a rejection of Western linear perspective in favor of a flattened, unfolding composition.
In terms of color, he favors abstraction and refinement over objective realism. Whether in the context of Chinese or Western art, he defies classification within any particular school. Both his visual vocabulary and compositional structures are uniquely his own—pure, independent, and unmistakably individual.