Wang Qingsong

China Blue Gallery, Beijing

Other examples exhibited:
Beijing, China Blue Gallery, Thinker - Wang Qingsong Solo Exhibition, April 27-June 8, 2007
Memmingen, MEWO Kunsthalle, China: Past, Present and Future - Wang Qingsong Solo Exhibition, February 5-November 10, 2007
Arras, City Hall, Art Academy and Public Library, Wang Qingsong in Arras, May 13-June 14, 2005
Pingyao, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Satirizing the Times - Wang Qingsong Solo Exhibition, September 16-22, 2002 

Chen Weiqun ed., Sanguine Splendor - Wang Qingsong Works, Beijing, 2007, p. 153, illustrated in color
Kerry Roach, Wang Qingsong, London, 2006, pp. 64-65, illustrated in color
Britta Erickson, On the Edge, Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West, Stanford, 2005, p. 30, illustrated in color
Créateurs du Nouveau Monde, Montpellier, 2005, p. 158, illustrated in color
Photo China, May 2003, pp. 40-41, illustrated in color
Out of the Red: China Art Now, Italy, 2002, p. 57, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition. There are no visible condition problems. It is framed under plexiglas and was not examined out of frame.
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The work of Wang Qingsong, who has emerged as one of the most significant photographers in Chinese contemporary art, brilliantly critiques the foibles of contemporary China, now well on its way toward a media-ravaged consumer paradise.  Wang's staged tableaux have their echoes in Chinese historical imagery - some of which he has directly recreated in contemporary guise - but he is most interested in defining the China of today, its embrace of materialism pictured for us in a sharp-edged satirical report.  In compositional terms and in the sense of alienation they often reveal, Wang's photographic tableaux seem to bear a debt to the work of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall.  But the dancing girls in various states of undress, the use of brands like Marlboro and Coca Cola, the return of class relations that Wang sometimes puts on view - all these are signifiers of the time and place of Wang's art and a loss of classical morality and idealism it presents.  Wang mourns the past by highlighting the present, looking ahead to a future that seems up for grabs.

But for all the incisiveness of his satire, Wang's stance is more complicated than simple derision.  In some sense, he presents an almost objective view of the obsessions of contemporary society, his sly sense of humor reminding us of the absurdity of modern life.  One has the sense Wang wants to give us the big picture, to show us the inevitability of China's long march toward consumerism - but at the same time to undermine the specious gifts of material appetite run rampant.

Wang is determined to have the last say about social matters, a position he humorously acknowledges in a work like Forum (2001, Lot 144).  Dressed in a dark suit and tie, the artist himself is surrounded by a sea of microphones whose logos include CNN, CCTV, the Washington Post, and NBC.  To the right side of the image, a group of photographers focuses on this stone-faced speaker and includes people of both Eastern and Western origin, one of whom uses a cheap, disposable camera.  Presiding over the speaker is a blue banner with red Chinese characters, rendered in white English words below: "International Forum on Reestablishing Contemporary Civilization."  It is a humorous image, with all the attention being paid to our somewhat ridiculous member of the intelligentsia, who will speak on the reestablishment of modern life - a nice, big theme that surely merits someone's thinking about.  Clearly it's a ridiculous, fictive affair; by placing himself amidst the charade, Wang's critical position would seem to be beyond reproach, less finger pointing than calling attention to the unavoidable foolishness around him. 

In another photograph entitled Art Express (2002, Lot 145), two buses have collided and belch forth large plumes of smoke.  Would-be art fans nonetheless line up to enter the bus on the left, while the smoke-filled bus on the right holds a driver and a few travelers who are barely visible through the blackness of the front windshield.  The scene takes place in the middle of nowhere - as plenty of much-ballyhooed fairs and exhibitions do, too, these days - though surely these buses were en route to some très chic locale.  Looks like this art tour has gotten off to a pretty disastrous start, and it's probably accurate to read in the image a pessimistic view of the art industry from start to finish - one with which Wang himself is increasingly familiar and successful.  Port, an equally grand image, might be subjected to similar scrutiny with the arrival and departure of goods and people likely the target of Wang's critical lens.

Wang works hard to contrive images that rather gleefully celebrate the absurdity of contemporary society.  For example, in Offering (2003, Lot 149), a buxom woman painted gold, is portrayed as a one-armed Eastern goddess sitting on a pedestal in the middle of a lake and backed by a mandorla.  Surrounding the figure in shallow water are a group of more than two-dozen devotees, men and women who offer the icon various goodies:  fruit, Chinese money, flowers, a small globe, beverages, etc.  The sheer materialism of the offerings in this absurd setting results in a formally balanced image of amusing satire.  The more extended series of pictures (Lot 150) on the subject of troops in trenches battling towards the high ground of McDonald's golden arches might be read along similar lines.

The later work Competition (2004, Lot 146) seems to sum up much of Wang's focus.  The photograph documents all manner of advertisements, written in both Chinese and English.  Within the interior, the floor is littered with discarded signs - a McDonald's here, a Citibank there - and the walls more than four stories high are completely papered with advertisements from Toyota, Dell, Dunhill, Ecco and countless others.  A stairs with workers and a number of signs gives a sense of the huge dimensions of the space portrayed in the photograph.  One worker addresses his colleagues with a megaphone; he stands on a ladder not far from larger scaffolding that supports several people.  The tableau as a whole suggests the overwhelming nature of today's capitalistic competition.  Here, as in most of Wang's works, the brave new world of contemporary China is put to question.  Overwhelmed in the hangar of adverts, this is the familiar world of consumption for consumption's sake. 

Wang's characteristic humor makes it seem as though he accepts the situation in which we are all embroiled in one way or another.  But his satire is also pointed enough that the reverse might well be true.  However we may read Wang's social critique - or the thoughts he might have about his own international success - the alliance between money and art is rendered as inherently absurd, with greedy desire regularly rearing its grotesquely beautiful head in the midst of this false security of Wang's imaginative pictorial world.

-Jonathan Goodman