Wang Jinsong

each signed in Pinyin and dated 1990 on the reverse

Acquired directly from the artist
Collection of Jean and Michael Micketti, Denver

China, Beijing, Beijing Art Museum, Art Times Three, A Painting Exhibition: Wang JInsong, Zhou Qi, Zeng Huijie, 13-20 May, 1990

The Story of Wang Jinsong's 90', Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, China, 2015, pp. 85-86

Overall in good condition. Overall framed dimensions: 71.5 by 96.5 cm ; 28⅛ by 38 in. each
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Born in Harbin in 1963, Wang Jinsong is a leading contemporary Chinese artist whose artistic explorations over the past three decades include ink painting, oil painting, installation, photography and video art. A graduate from the Chinese painting department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, Wang is most familiar with the medium of ink, even though his earliest oil paintings were recognized at the forefront of China’s Cynical Realism and Political Pop art movements. Wang’s works have been exhibited extensively around the world as part of breakout exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art, such as China Avant-Garde: Counter-Currents in Art and Culture (1993), China’s New Art Post 1989 (1993), and Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1998).  

The artist describes creating this series of work during a period when the standards of ink-wash painting were the topic of debate. The rigid rules of how to create and evaluate traditional Chinese painting through composition, brushwork and genre provided a structure against which Wang could experiment. In the present lot, Wang deconstructs elements of painting into three disparate images of gridded monochromatic ink wash lines and repeated red seals bearing the words for "qualified" or up-to-standard. The Qualified triptych was first shown in a group exhibition at the Beijing Art Museum alongside other experimental paintings signifying modes of production in painting.