Editor’s note: Themed on “Chasing the Light”, 2025 CAFA Graduation Season kicked off at CAFA Art Museum in early summer. Surrounded by diversified creations, visitors may find that some of graduates chose performance to burst their inner impulses, some chose to interact with the space to build their visual tension, and some got inspired from traditions to bring about more contemporary creative appearances. More young creators are paying their attention to drawing materials from the life around them, trying to capture the multiple realities of emotions, experiences and thoughts...
In these cases, the collisions between individual experience and the external world, between new and old media, as well as between virtual life and real life have repeatedly inspired their creativity that may not be perfect but fresh. CAFA graduates who believe in “light”, follow the light in their hearts and present their initial explorations of “what art is” that have been honed for several years at their degree shows. Featuring interviews with graduates at Phase B Undergraduate Students Exhibition, “CAFA Graduates Who Believe in ‘Light’”, invites graduates to talk about their creative stories from a more microscopic and in-depth perspective, and we would like to share and convey the “light” in the hearts of young people through these candid and vivid narrations.
A Graphic Score System of Painting Structure
By Wu Tianchou, Department of Mural Painting
All those moments will be lost
In time
Like tears
In
Rain
—Blade Runner
Compared to painting, music was an art form that I have been touched earlier and resonated with deeply. Piano, bel canto, composition, music theory, symphony, experimental music, and parallel experiments in painting have jointly formed the cornerstones of my artistic practice.
Exhibition View of Indoor Sightseeing
Indoor Sightseeing, 90x90cm, Acrylic on board
This series of work stems from my own experience of studying both music and painting, and I have named it “A Graphic Score System of Painting Structure”. The system is based on the graphic score that I painted, and I have constructed an internal logical structure connecting visual art (painting) and auditory art (music). For each graphic score, I create a corresponding narrative song based on the story, atmosphere and tone contained in the narrative painting. Meanwhile, the information of music recorded by painting is applied to musical scores, thus a repetitive creative dialogue has been formed. So far, it seems that this series of work has fully realized what I envisioned.
Visions, 90x90cm, Acrylic on board
Visions(detail), 90x90cm, Acrylic on board
My work consists of three parts: painting, music, and score, forming an interdisciplinary textual system with a logical structure. The pure narrative painting above the score depicts a group of images with a peculiar sense, and based on the picture composed of these images, I create a corresponding music with visual sense and narrative. In this way, my painting can be faithfully presented by music.
Music performance, learning and composition
When a painting is born in the form of musical score, it naturally has the ability to express itself in a different way from traditional paintings. It has been endowed with the function of recording musical information in musical score, and it can also narrate like classical paintings.
Wu Tianchou introduced his work during 2025 Graduation Season.
I think there are two creative drives in the world, one comes from scarcity and the other comes from giving. The former is to create what is lacking, and this creation will bring great suffering and become unsustainable; The latter is based on a strong impulse in the depths of the soul, driven by a great desire to give something to the world, which is not dominated by the mind, but takes place in the deeper down.
Workshots of Wu Tianchou
Text and Image Courtesy of Wu Tianchou, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.
