WANG GUOFENG

Wang Guofeng was born in 1967 in Liaoning Province, China. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department in Inner Mongolia Normal University in Hohhot in 1991 and further studied painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Wang Guofeng considers that his training in painting allowed him to go beyond the limits of professional photography. In his photo series Ideality he examines the legacy of Chinese socialism through the so-called Ten Grand buildings of Beijing. Erected in 1959 to mark the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic, they were conceived as lasting monuments to the achievements of socialist rule. These vast edifices (all completed in a state-mandated ten months) proclaimed the triumph of reason, modernity and people power. Wang Guofeng grew up under socialism and is all too aware of its disregard for the people it claims to represent (a few years ago, the government seized his studio and evicted him without compensation). Yet capitalism can be chaotic, callous and ugly. Wang Guofeng feels suspended between the two, in a state of “absurdity and alienation” that he explores through his photographs. His works are very large and high resolution so that even the most minute details are extremely sharp.