XIYAO WANG

Wang’s exhibition borrows its title from an aria in Francesco Nicola Fago’s eighteenth-century oratorio of the same name, the account of Pharaoh’s army being given back to the sea, sung by Philippe Jaroussky in a recording that stayed with Wang throughout the making of these works.

“The title II faraone sommerso came from a song that accompanied me intensively while I was creating these two paintings. What attracted me was not only the image of the ‘submerged pharaoh’ itself, but the feeling contained within it - a sense of sinking into another layer of time, memory, and consciousness.”

Wang’s titles have always worked this way. They are not, she says, “an explanation of the work, but a way of opening another dimension of perception. It creates a connection between the painting, my personal experience, and a wider cultural or emotional memory.” II faraone sommerso asks to be read the same way.

That feeling begins, as her work always does, before there is any image at all. Asked what a new series starts from, Wang describes something closer to a change in weather than an idea:

“My works usually begin not with a specific image, but with a heightened state of perception - a sensitivity to the subtle changes of the world, such as light, temperature, colour, and the rhythms of nature. Painting allows me to capture these often overlooked experiences and transform them into another form of existence.”

Those sensations “gradually transform into lines, rhythms, and spaces on the canvas” - what she calls, elsewhere, a search for “a state of freedom and openness beyond boundaries,” where the line becomes “a trace of movement, energy, and time, connecting my inner world with the constantly changing world around me.”

For this presentation, that boundary-crossing takes on a particular weight. Wang sees them as “a continuation of my practice, but also as a subtle shift” - carrying forward her ongoing exploration of line and movement while turning toward something more introspective. “The ‘submerged’ state,” she says, “is not about disappearance, but about entering a place where boundaries become less fixed - between past and present, nature and human experience, the conscious and the unconscious.”

Wang describes every canvas as “a new beginning, but not as an isolated one” - each one carrying traces of what came before, “not necessarily in the form of images, but through sensations, rhythms, and ways of seeing that continue to evolve.” As she puts it: “a new canvas is a new space to enter, but it also carries the energy and experiences accumulated along the way.” These paintings arrive already carrying that inheritance. II faraone sommerso sinks into that accumulated space - and in sinking, finds a place where the distinctions we usually rely on hold a little less tightly.