MINGZHONG WU

Mingzhong’s works are notable for their intense color, use of classical motifs in a contemporary aesthetic, and his repeated theme of glass – with its connotations of transparency and fragility. Using oil and acrylic on canvas, he transforms humans and objects into somewhat transparent glass-like figures to describe man’s psychological connections. In contemporary China, people are driven to cities and metropolises by materialist desires, yet are left with a spiritual vacuum that cannot be filled by wealth or luxury. Through his portrayal of glass and bold use of color on otherwise quiet canvases, Wu reflects this fundamental fragility of human emotions in the fast-changing conditions of urban life to provoke a sense of paradoxical juxtaposition between hardness and crispness, dictatorship and freedom, justice and conspiracy, kindness and evil.

Mingzhong’s works have been described by critics as an avant-garde form of Chinese contemporary art, incorporating elements of Political Pop, Cynical Realism, and Gaudy Art, while featuring symbols of international politics, history, religion, and pop culture. Influenced greatly by Western art in the postmodernist tradition, his works express his individuality and unique personal perspective, one that is often defiant of social order and its harsh realities. His personal struggles with cancer influenced his views of nature and man’s relation to it, which can be seen reflected in his more recent works, which, in addition to featuring glass figures, also include imagery common to classical Chinese paintings such as pine trees and red-crowned cranes.