Wang Xingwei

Marella Gallery, Milan
Phillips de Pury & Company, London, 13 October, 2007, lot 132
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

China, Beijing, China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW), Still Paint: Wang Xingwei & Chen Danqing, 2001

L. S. de Bianchi, China Contemporary Painting, Bologna, 2005, p. 153
Wang Xingwei Collection, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2005, unpaginated

This work is generally in good condition. There is a crack to the black paint near the top central area and hairline craquelures along the edges and throughout the work. There are minor craquelures towards the bottom area, which are associated with the original vertical joining mark. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Towards the Origin of Painting
Wang Xingwei

Unique Wang Xingwei’s paintings, HelloHowMuch (1045) has no Chinese title. This non-sequitur of a title very effectively evokes of a state of being. At the beginning of China’s economic reforms, vendors in the major cities learnt some broken English in to sell their wares to foreign tourists. “Hello” and “how much” became the words they most often used (or abused), the first a greeting to a potential buyer, the second to invite the potential buyer to volunteer the price he or she is willing to pay. The vulgarity of these phrases may make one wince, but for those Chinese who had not had much international exposure, they entailed a certain curiosity and excitement, as well as a vague promise of wealth and fortune. Strung together consecutively and alienated from meaning, and then put in the mouth of a young air hostess in the public space of an airport or a hotel, the three English words in Wang Xingwei’s title become an absurdist joke.

Aside from certain random associations motivated by the title and aside from what is directly represented, the painter gives very few interpretable elements or clues to meaning. This is crucial. The painting depicts a young air hostess in a blue uniform. Those familiar with Wang Xingwei’s works will immediately think of his Penguin-Torture (2001), in which a naked woman is surrounded by four penguins. Although she stands facing a different direction, her posture is identical to that of the air hostess. This standing posture is repeated in Untitled (Hostess and Luggage) (2005) and Untitled (Nurse Playing Badminton) (2006). The bodily postures of his figures, male or female, standing or in repose, as well as their expressions, dress, and even make-up can all become prototypes for Wang Xingwei, as can be observed in many of his works. Aside from Comrade Xiaohe and Old Woman, the 2003 painting on corrugated cardboard Nude also uses a bodily posture as a prototype. For over a decade, the male figures and animals who recur in his works with the same appearances, postures, or even expressions gradually become a kind of semantic substitute. Abstract, conceptual figures and things replace figures and things with concrete characteristics. This theme is developed to fruition in his subsequent paintings.

Here, the hostess and her spatial environment is rendered in a manner at once casual and relaxed and deliberately saccharine and vulgar. The painterly finish is minimal and unadorned—“a simply accurate manner”—while also being slightly hyperbolic. Instigated by the title, an absurdist effect is created by her expression and body language create the absurdist and the physical context of the sofa lit by a warm lamp, the air conditioner, and the Vegas-style neon lights outside. After HelloHowMuch, Wang Xingwei’s creative career took a new turn. Beforehand, his works had generally been about art history and phenomena in contemporary art, and tended to borrow from or allude to art history. Afterwards, he mostly stopped his art-historical allusions. Instead he began to vary and deconstruct his own compositions frequently in order to rid his works of social values and to generate significance based on the language and form of the painting medium itself. By subverting and thwarting habitual, goal-oriented art, he has returned painting as an artistic medium and language to its origin.

In this painting and several ones afterwards, Wang Xingwei himself approached this origin of painting, where the simplest and most fundamental artistic elements are positive contributions to the medium. Transported to this frame of mind, the viewer becomes sensitive to the most minute and fundamental constructions and does not need to worry about comparisons to historical masterpieces. By confronting the viewer with a dilemma, Wang Xingwei has given him or her a total freedom. The painter has achieved this through his own understandings of his life, perceptions of the world, and attitude on artistic creation. He often represents the vignettes, topics, and other simple realities of everyday life in a casual, seemingly unreflective manner but from estranged perspectives, or uses them to generate logical paradoxes and spatiotemporal impossibilities to awkward and humourous effect. This is not only a refreshment of the painting medium, but also imposes a challenge and a hope for the viewer.

In this period, Wang Xingwei’s compositions are not based on any stable mode or theory, and thus seem varied, random, non-consecutive, or even unfocused. Aside from occasional art-historical references, fantasies, and historical topics, most of them are based on his personal experiences and interests. Many seem to be associative fantasies, while others seem to be deliberate satires. By uncovering the significance of artistic medium and language behind art students’ homework and applications, commercial illustrations, graffiti, sketches, book illustrations, and advertisement imagery, and then randomly adding his own fantasies, copies, and allusions, Wang Xingwei rids his paintings of methodological stability. The viewer is unable to obtain any positive and conclusive meanings from his works. Instead, guided vaguely by Wang’s titles and themes, the viewer recognizes stories, relationships, truths, and humour, or else the gaps between life and the world, or else nothing. The disjunctions, frequent switches in painting language, and lack of clear direction suggest a juxtaposition of different artistic mediums and figurative styles, which allows them each to demonstrate their uniqueness and prevents them from being digested into pre-given interpretations. Therefore the viewer is forced to forego the content and values he or she expects in painting, and gain instead new conceptual and interpretative possibilities. The viewer is likewise made to reflect on how much his or her habitual approach to painting is informed by experiences outside of painting.