Wang Xingwei

initialed in Pinyin and dated 2005

Private Collection, China

China, Beijing, China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW), Show Me... Catch Me... Sight Unseen - Xie Nanxing and Wang Xingwei, 12 November to 12 December 2005
China, Beijing, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art , Wang Xingwei, 19 May to 18 August 2013

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Absurd and Jocose Style

Born in 1969 in Liaoning, Wang Xingwei graduated from Shenyang Normal University, a provincial teachers' college in 1990. Since then he has been given a range of titles - representative of art groups in Northeast China, the number one artist in Chinese "Bad" Painting, a leading figure of China's new wave movement. A composed and astute thinker, Zhao possesses not only an impeccable painting technique, but also a creative flare with which he has pioneered an idiosyncratic unique artistic language. He engages in a wide range of disciplines from painting, performance art, photography and installation art as well as art history and theory. At the solo exhibition of May 2013 held at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), he wrote: "I see the artist as a postman delivering letters. He should not be overly curious about what is inside the envelopes." This demonstrates the important distinction between Wang and most other fine art painters: He does not focus on the narrative, emotion or socio-cultural value of the image but on the logical thought process behind its creation, its art historical precedents and the structure of artistic language itself.

Wang's oeuvre can be divided into three phases. Until 2000, he focused on virtual settings and role play, borrowing elements from art history and reinventing them. Between 2000 and 2004 he actively challenged the viewer's visual experience by filling his compositions with surprising elements brought together by chance occurrences or imaginative leaps of visual logic. Works from this third phase, created between 2005 and 2008, feature subjects rich with symbolic references to identity. From 2008 he has produced geometric, three-dimensional works with a strong emphasis on the construction and language of colours.

One of the most important pieces from his recent UCCA solo exhibition, Golfer and Watermelons No.1 is representative work of that third period. The artist's original intention was to draw a golf ball, but his leaping and associative thought process soon turned it into a watermelon which was then expanded into a lush, green field of watermelons. The seemingly irrelevant red golf club and the golfer's serious expression reveal the artist's deductive process. The large area of dark green forms a sharp contrast with the deep, rich red colour, fundamentally challenging the viewer's preconception of both a golf player and a watermelon. The same man appears also in The Night in Shanghai (2004) and Untitled (Air hostess and Seaman) (2005), carrying the same despondent expression despite playing different roles in society.