Wang Guanyi, 2008, photo wikipedia
Wang Guangyi
王 广义
Painter *1957 Harbin, Heilongjian, lives in Beijing
Wang
Guanyi, 2008, photo wikipedia
Wang Guangyi was born in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province in 1956 or 1957. In 1984 Wang Guangyi graduated from the oil painting department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Wang Guangyi is the leading protagonist of the post-1989 Political Pop movement - one of the major artistic movements to have developed in the aftermath of the events of 1989 - Tiananmen Square and the closure of the China/Avant Garde exhibition at the China National Gallery.
Great Criticism
Series
1988-2004
Mao-AO
Triptych, 1988,
Alongside Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi and Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi is among China's most successful contemporary artists. His Mao AO-Triptych from 1988 was sold for £2,036,000 ($4.1 million) at a Phillips de Pury & Company auction in London in December 2007.
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His work is characterized by the
combination of propaganda images, Pop Art and commercial advertising.
Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism series combines the propaganda posters
of the Cultural Revolution with the brand names of famous western
consumer products. Idealised peasants and workers yield pens instead
of hammers or shovels and appear to extol the virtues of Coca Cola,
Chanel No 5, or Swatch. Wang Guangyi calls the ironic effect produced
by the juxtaposition of icons, cultural or other, from different eras
“anatomic structuralism.” This anatomic structuralism destroys
the original intent of each image resulting in an absurdity.
Text:
terminators
Materialist's Art
2006
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Wang Guangyi's “Materialist's Art”
is exemplary of a new "cultural revolution". The
dramatically outlined figures brandishing red book gospel, set
against flat planes of colour, are rendered in a style specific to
Chinese government issue posters of the late 60s and early 70s.
Emblazoned with the words " Materialist's" and "Art"
the messaging is both condemnation and incitement, a statement of
radicalisation and power, repositioning the aesthetics of
totalitarian authority as a signifier of absolute and extravagant
decadence.
Text: Saatchi
Gallery London
Aesthetics of (Cold)
War Series
2006-2008
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Wang's “Aesthetics of War - Blue
No. 3” operates as a dual narrative. Combining the graphic styles
of comic books and instructional manuals with scrawled
blackboard-like text his work points to a visual analysis that's
equally personal and pedagogical. Rendered in X-ray tones, his
tableau is situated in the realm of science fiction and adventure,
giving a sense of toxicity and danger to the pop motifs and generic
script, questioning the implications of public images as coded
messages and the tacit role of the artist as producer.
Text:
Gallery
Saatchi London
The Saatchi comment is too serious for my taste. As a Wang-style counter-weight I inserted the Warhol poster (genuine Wang Guangyi!). Perhaps Wang is truly anxiety ridden: The remainder of the series are a number of naive sculptures with long Chinese explanations showing a woman in a dugout shelter and people wearing gasmasks, or lying flattened on the ground in an airraid exercise - not worth showing here.... There are no more examples of Wang's work in the internet after 2008. - He too got too rich.
