WANG QIANG
Wang Qiang’s painting skills were honed through abstraction and minimalism. He rationally constructs modern artistic notions with a unique individual style. In his works the colors of real life are brightened and purified, compressed and simplified. An incredible sense of live, on-the-spot presence and a refreshing sense of transparence inject an incredible flow of air into the picture, demonstrating a sensory experience that’s even more bewildering than the past or the future.
In his solo exhibition Fremde Stadt, Wang Qiang chose not to portray any impressive urban architecture, nor any ghostly and mysterious nightlife scenes, or even fascinating, bodies rife with the desire for consumption. Instead, what he presents to us spectators are metropolitan scenery and rusty scaffoldings, or a mountain of trash made of piled up computer debris symbolising modern life and the information era. All of his works related to the sky above feature a wisp of polluted haze that makes spectators queasy about their physical health. The thus portrayed fleeting urban setting becomes both unfamiliar and truthful.
Wang Qiang (b. 1971, Beijing, China) received his BFA from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1997. In 2004, he obtained his Master’s degree (i.e. Meisterschüler) at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include The Poet’s Winter, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China (2017); Fremde Stadt, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China (2015). Recent group exhibition includes Intervention and Redevelopment: The Imagery Means of Contemporary Art, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China (2020); A White Space Odyssey, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China (2019); Picture Perfect, Viasaterna Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2015). Wang Qiang currently lives and works in Beijing and Düsseldorf.
Text courtesy White Space.
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