Wang Youshen's art is characterized by a focus on the influence mass media exerts on our thoughts, emotions and actions. For example, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, which are determined by value judgments, if never explicitly stated. In his photograph-based images, Wang Youshen uses selected press images as well as private photos as the basis of his investigation into the various functions and values of images, their truth content and modes of employment. Having worked as a magazine editor, Wang Youshen is particular concerned about the power of print imagery. This is directly reflected in his work Newspaper (1993), where he uses newspaper as raw material, thus covering entire walls and printing them directly onto fabric for clothing. In a similar project called Newspaper Advertising (1993), he covered the Chinese wall with newspaper. By reusing the printed media in an entirely new context, Wang Youshen subverts and questions its original meaning.
Read MoreIn a recent, almost monochromatic series of photographic work entitled Washing (2003), his points of departure are two original photographs documenting tens of thousands of Chinese buried alive by Japanese troops during the Second World War. One of the pictures depicts a scene where some remains from the burial site are washed off. Wang Youshen uses the symbolic act of washing to reflect upon the question of washing that can be understood both as a form of catharsis and as a form of amnesia; a cleansing of memory. Wang Youshen's visual experiments mirror his intent to develop a form of artistic communication that recognizes the necessarily fragmentary nature of any media. He therefore rejects the notion of reducing the work to a single coherent narrative. In an interview for the 2006 Bienal de Sao Paulo Wang Youshen explained his ideas concerning the media: "The media experience is really an experience in itself. Our cognition, everything encompasses the media. All is media and for me it has a twofold meaning: it concerns me, as the media is not only my occupational work, but also my artistic tool. I take the media as the basic information carrier, the main body which indicates information processing and art. The works Darkroom and Washing, accomplished since 1989 and continuously, have been excavating the media image resources which news conveys as images."
Wang Youshen was born in Beijing in 1964. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He resides and works in Beijing. Recent exhibitions include Reshaping History: Chinart from 200-2009, The Theme, China National Convention Center, Beijing(2010); Lianzhou International Photo Festival, Lianzhou, Guangdong(2009); Wang Youshen, Washing, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2007); the 27th Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2006), Zooming into Focus, National Art Museum of China (Beijing, 2005), Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, (U.S.A., U.K. and Germany, 2004-2005), 5th Shanghai Biennale: Techniques of the Visible, Shanghai Art Museum (2004), Washing – New Works by Wang Youshen, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai (2004) and 45th Venice Biennale, Italy(1993).
