Celestial Seasons

The large-scale black and white photography focuses on China’s Mt. Huangshan mountain range, which Wusheng has shot for the past forty years. Located in the southern part of the Ahui province, with seventy-two peaks, it is one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. Wusheng, who grew up in the Anhui province near the Yellow Mountains, was inspired by his childhood memories, traditional Chinese ink drawings, and the concept of an "other" world.

In tandem with the exhibition, Abbeville Press will release a hardcover edition of Celestial Realm: The Yellow Mountains of China. The 240-page volume includes an introduction by art historian Wu Hung. An excerpt from it describes one of Wusheng’s photographs as "a symphony of dark and light and of substance and emptiness. The strange, vertical peak emerges from a gossamer mist that veils a deep abyss. Its impressive height is suggested by the silhouette of tall trees in the foreground, yet is dwarfed by the huge precipices looming above it. The image retains almost all the essential features and qualities of an immortal mountain in traditional Chinese art: a particular iconography of mountain peaks, the fundamental role of clouds and mist, a heightened feeling of mystery, and a sense of infinity generated by a mountain represented as both macrocosm and microcosm."