Wang Guangyi

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Wang Guangyi, 2011

Wang Guangyi ( Chinese王广义, * 1957 , Harbin , Heilongjiang , China ) is a contemporary Chinese artist . He is one of the best-known representatives of the contemporary Chinese art movement that emerged in the late 1980s. He lives and works in Beijing .

life and work

Wang Guangyi, born in Heilongjiang in 1957, is considered one of the most important contemporary Chinese artists. Son of a railway worker from northern China, he worked in a rural village for three years. After his father retired, Wang Guangyi also became a railroad worker. However, he never gave up his dream of going to college. After several unsuccessful attempts, he was accepted at the Zhejiang Art Academy, where he studied oil painting. He graduated there in 1984. Wang Guangyi has caught the attention of critics and the international market with the series Great Criticism. The series has made him an icon of contemporary Chinese art.

Like many Chinese artists of his generation, his work is heavily influenced by his youth during the Cultural Revolution. Together with artists of the same age as Yue Minjun , Zeng Fanzhi and Fang Lijun , Zeng is part of an art movement that is known as political pop . Wang Guangyi's work is erroneously assigned to “Political Pop” (“Political Pop”). On the other hand, an important theme in his work is his relationship to transcendence. Typical of his work is the combination of propaganda art of the Cultural Revolution with Pop Art aesthetics. The best known is his series Great Criticism, in which he combines logos of western branded products such as Coca-Cola, Gucci, Rolex or Chanel with scenes from propaganda posters.

Major works and major series

  • The Back of Humanity (1985) and Frozen North Pole (1984-85)

The work on the Frozen North Pole series uses rather cold and bleak characters. They are characterized by simple shapes and soft brushstrokes to portray a wintry world fairly familiar to the artist who lived in northern China as a young man. In these paintings, the North Pole is not viewed in terms of its geographical features, but as a symbolic place where a new faith arises, in which the individual relates primarily to himself, without detaching himself from society. In the years in which these paintings were created, belief and the future of communism were embodied in China. But instead of adopting the theses of dialectical materialism, the group of young artists from the north, including Wang Guangyi, decided to deal with the texts of Western philosophy.

  • Post Classical (1986–1988)

The concept of faith developed by Wang Guangyi and artists close to him has found a certain affinity with classical Western art. The Post Classical series is the result of the synthetic revision of the masterpieces of Western art related to the themes of religion, morality, belief and ideology. These paintings use different shades of gray and unite the human figure and its environment without many details. Wang Guangyi's goal was to develop a style that was different from classical art; with this strategy he expresses the concepts and personal perspectives that he has developed from reading Gombrich.

  • Great Criticism (1990-2007)

These works use propaganda imagery of the Cultural Revolution and logos of contemporary brands taken from Western advertising. Wang Guangyi has made this series since 1990 but ended in 2007. He was convinced that the international market success of the series could jeopardize its original meaning, which is that political propaganda and advertising are two forms of brainwashing.

  • VISA (1994)

The installation refers to the control mechanisms that governments of different countries use to control the movements of individuals through identity cards and passports. In this installation, Wang Guangyi used wooden boxes that he stacked very neatly on top of each other; the side facing the viewer shows the image of the face of a child who was photographed in a hospital. The images are tinted red and green. On the pictures, Wang Guangyi has screened his first and last name, gender and the date on which these works were conceived, January 2, 1994 (it was erroneously written several times that this was the artist's date of birth). The phone number that the artist used at the time appears on some boxes; the word “VISA” is printed on other boxes.

  • Passport (1994–1995), VISA (1995–1998) and Virus Carriers (1996–1998)

In these series of paintings, the terms “VISA”, “Passport” and “Virus Carriers” are stamped on pictures of newborns, adults and dogs; the inscriptions are accompanied by information on the subject's name, place and date of birth and gender. By referring to the bureaucratic procedures associated with traveling from one country to another, the works reveal how the state protects itself by exploring the potential threat to individuals. In the Virus Carriers series, a painting shows a picture of a dog accompanied by information that represents a kind of animal ID; the animal is marked here as a dangerous virus carrier. VISA, Passport and Virus Carriers reflect society's use of fear as a system of control that overshadows dangers and threats. Wang Guangyi still feels a pronounced, deeply rooted climate of mutual suspicion and impending danger. This climate that emerged during the Cold War is still present today, although it has lost the aspect of coercive indoctrination. The Wang Guangyis reflects on the relationship between power and the individual. Power retains control over the individual by fueling collective fears and then offering itself as a bulwark against the unknown dangers that suddenly threaten the defenseless. According to the artist, these forms of psychological pressure result in a tacit agreement between power and the individual, which promises a kind of protection from infection with new viruses and in return demands a waiver of part of personal freedom.

  • Quarantine - All Food is Potentially Poisonous (1996) and 24-hour Food Degeneration Process (1997)

In order to produce Quarantine-All Foods are Potentially Poisonous, Guangyi reconstructed the small supermarket in his neighborhood in an exhibition room. Here on the shelves, in addition to the usual products of the supermarket, were twenty propaganda posters taken from a quarantine station about the dangers of poor hygiene. In the face of this juxtaposition, the viewer is forced to reflect on insecurities and fears that he thought disappeared with the end of the Cold War. It is interesting to note that in the humid climate of southern China, vegetables simply rot. On the other hand, new roots and shoots sprout from potatoes, onions and other tubers, giving the objects a new kind of appearance. It could be said that this process creates a new form of beauty, thus dispelling fear of food rot. With the 24-hour Food Degeneration Process the artist shows that all foods have a so-called “shelf life” of only about 24 hours. When a food is kept for a longer period of time it is called “fresh”. As time goes on, its condition changes and with it the way it is called. The installation consists of ten small posters and four small unsealed containers full of plastic bags, bottles, canning jars, fruit and vegetables. Over time, the food will gradually start to rot and smell unpleasantly putrid. As the visitors gave themselves over to this, fruit and vegetables were changed several times during the course of the exhibition, which interrupted the slow decomposition process, which was one of the characteristics of the work.

  • Basic Education (2001)

Basic Education is an installation that recreates a construction site during the Cold War years. The reconstruction uses shovels, scaffolding, work clothes and propaganda posters. The truthfulness of the scene raises the fear that one will relive a psychological climate that one believed to have finally overcome.

  • Materialist series (2001-2005)

Materialist is a series of sculptures that take up twelve images of workers, peasants and soldiers taken from propaganda posters. According to Wang Guangyi, these propaganda images emphasize that the main force of the people and the anger they express with their movements originates from their belief in ideology. With these sculptures the artist wants to visualize the expression of the general feeling of the people. With reference to dialectical materialism, the word "materialist" has a special meaning in the history of China because it sums up socialist ideology in one word. Chinese history emphasizes that the Chinese are “perfect materialists” and that “the perfect materialists are not afraid of anything; they can conquer the world and change the fate of the people of our nation ”. At the same time, however, the artist sees a different level of meaning in his work. In art, things that have a certain conceptual property are referred to as "the object". This term has the same root in Chinese as "materialist". Wang Guangyi explains, “There is a linguistic connection with the materialists in this case. I want to use the term materialist to create an ambiguity that leads the audience to make a double cultural connection ”.

  • Monument to Laborers (2001)

The original Monument to Laborers project wanted to make twenty concrete slabs on site. It was to be engraved with the names of the model workers and workers who were injured or died in the Chinese city of Shenzhen over the past twenty years. The artist then wanted to cover the concrete slabs with plexiglass to give each slab the meaning of an alternative monument. However, the final presentation of the installation reproduced the monumental sculptures - The Materialist. He housed these in glass showcases and thus created the feeling of visual distance and alienation from these extremely familiar shapes. The audience is encouraged to reconsider the meaning of the words “work” and “worker” in a consumer-oriented context.

  • Cold War Aesthetic (2007-2008)

Wang Guangyi is convinced that the international political situation is still influenced by the ideological and political conflicts of the past between the USA, the Soviet Union and China. In 2007 the artist created a series of works with which he investigated the psychological effects that propaganda had during the Cold War years. Cold War Aesthetic consists of a video installation, sculptures and propaganda posters from the 1970s. There are also paintings inspired by the propaganda posters and illustrated handbooks that the Chinese government wrote to inform the population about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The whole scene relates to the national defense programs, which in the 1960s educated the population about how to protect themselves in the event of a gas, nuclear and bacterial war; it brings back memories of exercises in which the artist himself participated as a child. By reconstructing moments from a bygone era, the installation challenges the viewer to grapple with the reality of those years. It aims to allow him to relive the climate and mindset that characterized the Cold War. Wang Guangyi challenges the viewer to form their own opinion about events that still affect the present from the recent past.

  • Temperature (2010-2011)

Temperature is an installation of 1920 thermometers divided into 48 groups. The thermometers are to be understood as a metaphor for a device for measuring the "temperature" of different regions of the world. The installation does not want to measure the temperature in the literal sense, but the political climate, the tensions and relaxations as experienced by the local populations in the context of their political and social life.

  • New Religion (2011)

New Religion is a series of oil paintings whose subjects are the great political leaders (Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong), the spiritual leaders (Christ), the spiritual and political leaders at the same time (Pope John XXIII) or philosophers whose way of thinking still influences exercises (Marx and Engels) are. It seems that Wang Guangyi took the pictures from negatives. Although the artist uses the traditional painting technique of oil on canvas in these works, the ambiguity that creates the reference to the photographic medium breaks the familiarity the viewer has with them and opens up new reflections about their meaning. The same disturbing influence are exerted by the numbers stamped on some canvases and the dripping of paint. Through this series of works, Wang Guangyi asked himself what connects the great utopias with one another, what is the attraction that they exert on people and why all people need figures onto which they project their beliefs.

  • Sacred Object (2012)

Sacred Object consists of 600 layers of oilcloth that pile up on the floor to form a parallelepiped (10 × 1.20 × 0.8 m). The oilcloth refers to the parchments on which people wrote in antiquity, but also to the wax tablet, which was also scratched with the stylus in the ancient world. The idea of ​​layering oilcloths on top of one another indicates a sedimentation of knowledge that accumulates over time through writing. The stacked leaves become maps of the world which, by mixing again, create a fruitful mixture. This in turn points to a metaphysical horizon in which the sacred is a place for dialogue and comparison and not for conflict.

  • Things-In-Themselves (2012)

Things-In-Themselves is an installation made of jute sacks full of rice that are piled up around the perimeter of the funnel-shaped exhibition space. The installation goes back to a memory of Wang Guangyi, who in his youth during the years at the art college, temporarily worked in a granary. The impressions from the youth on which Things-In-Themselves are based are overcome by the fact that the grain sacks are not piled up in the granaries as they are in this installation. In the exhibition, which was created for an installation at the Today Art Museum in 2012, the sacks do not reveal their contents. It can, however, be guessed through the smell. With Things-In-Themselves, Wang Guangyi creates the form and image of something unknowable that lies beyond experience; consequently he refers to what Kant calls “noumenon”, “thing in itself”.

Important exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • Wang Guangyi: Cold War Aesthetics (Shanghai Pujiang Oversea Chinese Town Public Art Project), Pujiang Oversea Chinese Town, Shanghai, China, 2012.
  • Thing in Itself: Utopia, Pop and Personal Theology - Wang Guangyi Retrospective. Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2012.
  • Chongqing Contemporary Art Center, 2011.
  • He Xiangning Art Museum, Guangdong, 2008.
  • Institute of Louisse Blouin Foundation, London, UK, 2008.
  • Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, He Xiangning / Art Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2008.
  • Wang Guangyi, Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris, France, 2007.
  • Wang Guangyi, Arario Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, 2006.
  • Wang Guangyi, Galerie Urs Meile, Luzern, Switzerland, 2004.
  • Wang Guangyi, Enrico Navarra Gallery, Paris, France, 2003.
  • Wang Guangyi: Face of Faith, Soobin Art Int'l, Singapore, 2001.
  • Witnessed: Wang Guangyi, Littmann Kulturprojekte, Basel, Switzerland, 1996.
  • Wang Guangyi, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, China, 1994.

Group exhibitions (selection)

  • Passage to History: 20 Years of La Biennale di Venezia and Chinese Contemporary Art, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013.
  • 2010 Chinese Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2010.
  • Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2010.
  • China contemporary art exhibition, Cuba Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, 2009.
  • Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass, USA, 2009.
  • ChinaMania, Colorful, Diverse and Distinctly Narrative, Arken Museum for Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen, 2009.
  • Five Years of Duolun: Chinese Contemporary Art Retrospective Exhibition, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, 2008.
  • Avant-Garde China: Twenty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art, The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan, 2008.
  • Writing on the Wall, Chinese New Realism and Avant-Garde in the Eighties and nineties, Groninger Museum , Groningen
  • Chinese Contemporary art, Tretyakov Gallery , Moscow, 2007.
  • Mahjong: Chinese contemporary art from the Sigg Collection, Hamburger Kunsthalle , Hamburg, 2007, and Kunstmuseum Bern , 2005.
  • Chine, le corps partout? Le Musée d'Art Contemporain, Marseille, France, 2004.
  • Alors la Chine ?, Center Pompidou , Paris, France, 2003.
  • Towards a New Image, Twenty Years of Chinese Contemporary Painting, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Shanghai Art Museum , Shanghai; Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou; Sichuan Modern Art Museum, Chengdu, 2001.
  • Inside Out, New Chinese Art, Museo de Art Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico, 1999.
  • China! House of World Cultures , Berlin, 1998, Künstlerhaus Vienna , 1997, Kunstmuseum Bonn , 1996.
  • Magic of Numbers in 20th Century Art, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart , 1997.
  • 22nd São Paulo Biennale , 1994.
  • China Avant-garde, House of World Cultures , Berlin; Kunsthal Rotterdam , Brandts Klaederfabrik, Odense, Denmark; Hildesheim Art Gallery; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1993.
  • Modern Chinese Art, Tokyo Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 1990.
  • The 6th Art Exhibition of People's Republic of China, China National Art Gallery, Beijing, 1986.

Publications

Monographs

  • Wang Guangyi, timezone 8, Hong Kong 2002. Essays by Karen Smith, Yan Shanchen, Charles Merewether, Li Xianting, Huang Zhuan and Lu Peng. ISBN 962-86388-7-4 .
  • Demetrio Paparoni, Wang Guangyi, Words and Thoughts 1985–2012, Skira , Milan 2013, ISBN 978-88-572-1567-9 .
  • Huang Zhuan, Politics and Theology in Chinese Contemporary Art / Reflections on the work of Wang Guangyi, Skira, Milan 2013, ISBN 978-88-572-2143-4 .

Catalogs

  • Yan Shanchun, Lu Peng and others, Wang Guangyi within the Trends of Contemporary Art (Chengdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, 1992).
  • Wang Guangyi: Face of Faith (Singapore: Soobin Art Int'l, 2001).
  • Wang Guangyi: The Legacy of Heroism (Hong Kong and Paris: Hanart TZ Gallery and Galerie Enrico Navarra, 2004).
  • Wang Guangyi (Seoul: Arario Gallery, 2006).
  • Wang Guangyi: Art and People (Chengdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2006).
  • Wang Guangyi (Seoul and Paris: Arario Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2007).
  • Huang Zhuan and Fang Lihua, Visual Politics: Another Wang Guangyi (Guangzhou City: Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2008).
  • Wang Guangyi: Cold War Aesthetics (London: Louise Blouin Foundation, 2008).
  • Thing-in-Itself: Utopia, Pop and Personal Theology, edited by Huang Zhuan (Guangzhou City: Lingnan Art Publishing House, 2012)

Public collections

  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, USA.
  • Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain.
  • Cartier Limited, Paris, France.
  • China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China.
  • China Club, Hong Kong, China.
  • German Historical Museum, Berlin, Germany.
  • Essl Museum - Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria.
  • Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou City, China.
  • Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
  • Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Switzerland.
  • He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
  • Long Museum, Shanghai, China. • Museum Ludwig, Aachen, Germany.
  • Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China
  • Overseas Chinese Town, Shanghai, China.
  • Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California, USA.
  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, USA.
  • Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.
  • Taikang Life Insurance Company
  • Limited, Beijing, China.
  • The Ford Foundation, New York, USA.
  • The Sammlung Essl Collection of contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria.
  • Today Art Museum, Beijing, China.
  • Yuz Art Museum, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Documentaries about Wang Guangyi

  • CHIMERAS - Wang Guangyi, Mika Mattila (Finland), 69m17s, Mika Mattila & Navybluebird Ltd., Special show: Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2012; Toronto, 2013; San Francisco, 2013.
  • Reasoning with Idols - Wang Guangyi, Andrew Cohen (Swiss), 26m46s, AC Films, Swiss, 2012.
  • Art of Wang Guangyi, Wang Junyi (China), 76m20s, Wang Guangyi Studio, Chongqing: Tank Loft-Chongqing Contemporary Art Center, 2011; Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, 2011; Beijing: Today Art Museum, 2012.
  • Arts China - Wang Guangyi, Weng Ling (China), 36m22s,
  • The Travel Channel (Hainan), China (satellite television), 2010.
  • Wang Guangyi, Wang Luxiang (China), 36m13s, Phoenix Television, 2006, Hong Kong, China
  • The Orient Sun - Wang Guangyi, 48m39s, SBS Television, South Korea, 2005.
  • 85 New Wave, Shi Xianfa (China), 20m02s, CCTV, China, 1986.

literature

  • Lu Peng: A History Of Art in 20th-Century China. Edizioni Charter, Milan, 2010, pp. 1153–1174.
  • Demetrio Paparoni: Wang Guangyi, Words and Thoughts 1985–2012, Skira , Milan, 2013
  • Huang Zhuan: Politics and Theology in Chinese Contemporary Art / Reflections on the work of Wang Guangyi. Skira, Milan 2013

Web links

Commons : Wang Guangyi  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Profile of Wang Guangyi at 88-mocca.org, accessed February 26, 2012
  2. ↑ a b c d Profile of Wang Guangyi on saatchi-gallery.co.uk, accessed February 26, 2012
  3. ↑ zeit.de: "Cynical Realism" from January 31, 2007, accessed on February 26, 2012.
  4. ^ Profile of Wang Guangyi on Chines-gegenwartskunst.de, accessed on February 26, 2012
  5. ↑ a b c Lu Peng, A History Of Art in 20th-Century China, Edizioni Charta, Milan, Italy, 2010, pp. 1153–1174.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Demetrio Paparoni, Wang Guangyi, Words and Thoughts 1985–2012, Skira, Milan, Italy, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b c Huang Zhuan, Politics and Theology in Chinese Contemporary Art / Reflections on the work of Wang Guangyi, Skira, Milan, Italy 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Wang Guangyi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilongjiang , China