Author: WANG XINGWEI 王兴伟

Size: 120×120cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 2014

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LITERATURE
2014 Other Flows—Six Contemporary Chinese Painters / BERNIER/ELIADES GALLERY / Athens
2019 The Code of Physiognomy—Wang Xingwei/ P29 / Galerie Urs Meile
signed in pinyin initial, dated 2014 (on the reverse)
EXHIBITED
2014 Other Flows—Six Contemporary Chinese Painters, BERNIER/ELIADES GALLERY, Athens

As an indisputable Flagship figure of Chinese conceptual painting, Wang Xingwei extensively borrows Chinese and foreign art resources, and provocatively “adapted” art texts and cultural classics. By borrowing and splicing images, quoting and modulating texts, Wang presents his idiosyncratic and extremely shocking visual expression.
In 2008, Wang Xingwei moved to Beijing from Shanghai where he had lived for more than six years. As a person from northeast China, Wang ended his life in Shanghai as well as his comic series at the same time. In Beijing, he has rediscovered the direction of exploration, that is, to further emphasize the meaning of “painting” in his creation, and to seek an independent noumenon value located inside art by simplifying the image and shaping the body itself and analyzing the color relationship.
“Harmonious Laughter”, created in 2014, is one of Wang Xingwei’s masterpieces in exploring the essence of painting language. The work is based on the bronze sculpture “Joy and Harmony” by the former artist Pan He. In the painting, Wang Xingwei regards the three-dimensional sculpture as an existing pattern and transforms it into a two-dimensional picture, and then re-3D it by giving it realistic color and sense of volume.
In this transformation, the original meaning of “prototype” has disappeared, but it has only become a formal element and is put into a fictional concrete environment, thus producing a sense of strangeness, absurdity and humor. This modeling method is also used to shape the environment of pictures. For example, the tree crown is portrayed as a protruding and thick mane-like block, which increases the dynamic feeling in close range through the correlation between light and color blocks. However, this dynamic creation is not Rubens-style or even Dali-style, it is a new perceptual and visual experience and a new “reality”, which shows that art is the essence of art.
At this time, the depth is established within the picture, and the echo, association, hierarchy, contrast and rhythm among the figures become the original needs and basic values of artists’ work. It is worth mentioning that the characters in this work have the shadow of “Old Lady”, which is still the rhetoric of borrowing and replacing symbols, and the visual illusion that evolves from wheel to sphere. However, the modeling method and the use of color have undergone qualitative changes. Form has never been so full of texture and allure, and color has never been so self-sufficient and perfect.
In the process of creation in this stage, Wang Xingwei keeps approaching the origin of painting. In this sense, the most primitive and simplest language elements will contribute their positive value in the media sense. Wang Xingwei seems to go around a big circle and return to the path of theme creation. The difference is that, his painting has become an internal experience exercise from following strict formal standards in the early stage. Self-constructed “modeling value” liberates the imposing mechanism of painting language, so that personal expression finally touches on “theme”, that is, some inherent au-thenticity of life, which reflects a profound change that painting has experienced in contemporary Chinese art and culture.