视觉政治学：另一个王广义 Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi

Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi

Organizer:OCAT

Curator:Huang Zhuan

Supporter: OCT Group, OCT Real Estate Company

Dates:1^st September to 15^th October,2008

Address:He Xiangning Art Museum,Shennan Road,Overseas Chinese Town,Shenzhen,China

http://www.ocat.com.cn

Email:o-cat@ocat.com.cn

According to the curator Huang Zhuan, our present thinking about artist Wang Guangyi lacks real understanding. What will show in this exhibition is the very covert side of Wang Guangyi. As an artist, Wang Guangyi is powerful yet difficult to be fathomed. For him, he is in the face of question but not significance. If we doubt why he can become the representative of contemporary art in China, we should look for the reasons in the questions he face to and he account for.

In China, 1984 was a vibrant period in cultural and artistic development. Wang Guangyi joined and built the North Art Group in Harbin. North Art Group was one of the pioneer artistic groups. The members got together to discuss matters of fine art and culture, pondering the direction of Chinese art, and studying in order to find the possbilities of balance between and combination of the native and Western cultures. To a certain extent, North Art Group established the basis of and was the springboard for Wang Guangyi’s art.

Since 1988, Wang Guangyi put forward his concept of ridding art of humanist zeal at the Huangshan Conference, in which he developed his special sensitivity and intuition. He then worked with this theory in order to pull the art back into the social realistic realm. In 1990, Wang Guangyi participated in the I Don’t Want to Play Cards with Cezanne:China’s Avant-garde exhibition that showed in the Asia-Pacific Museum of Art in California, the United States. In addition, he has frequently participated in many important international exhibitions including the 45th International Biennale of Venice in 1993, the 22nd International Biennale of Sao Paulo in 1994, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1996, and so on. Wang Guangyi is one of the Chinese artists who moved towards the international art field.

This exhibition Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi will show the most important and the largest installation art works made by Wang Guangyi since 1989. None of these installations have been shown either abroad or at home. This exhibition is divided into 4 parts according to Wang Guangyi’s thoughts in different periods. The first part is Conjuncture Premonition (1989), the second part is System Research (1990-2001), the third part is Materialism Theology (2000-2008), and the last part is Cold War Aesthetics (2007-2008).

The unique beginning of this exhibition is the work Inflammable and Explosive Materials that was made in 1989 in Zhuhai. This work is helpful for understanding Wang Guangyi’s art. The terms Inflammable and Explosive not only refer to the danger of explosives, but also indicate the epoch in which the artist lives. This work is part of the significant establishment of his theory ridding art of humanist zeal; the other part is his painting Mao Zedong. In the following periods, Wang Guangyi turned to studying both the Chinese and Western political systems and re-building a native materialist visual myth. He has gradually formed a special visual polity in his own art. These works are the main contents of the third and fourth part of the exhibition.

The newest work of Wang Guangyi is the series Cold War Aesthetics, which forms the fourth part and is also the end of this exhibition. This work involves different subjects such as people under fear state, people with gas mask, people hiding in the shelter and profile of the air-raid shelter. Wang Guangyi uses both the resource of history and polity in this work, and makes his work within the context of the full military preparations in China that took place in the climax of the cold war period in 1960s.

In order to have a more in-depth understanding and to reveal the other side of Wang Guangyi, OCAT devotes much of its energy to the exhibition catalogue. This catalogue draws together the most important work made by Wang Guangyi, including most of the sketches, many documentation images of his exhibitions and the important articles about his artistic development written by many critics. This catalogue will offer a more persuasive argument for understanding Wang Guangyi and his art. Arario Beijing funds the official printing and publication.