Wang Guangle: Six Colors
Beijing Commune Gallery, Beijing
July 23 - September 12, 2015
Beijing Commune presents Wang Guangle’s third solo exhibition “Six Colors” at the gallery.
Wang Guangle is generally considered one of the most representative figures in the New Abstract Movement that has gradually formed through the past decades among the emerging generation in China’s contemporary art scene. His paintings have acquired increasing attention since the Terrazzo series in early 2000s. His later works from the Coffin Paint and Untitled series consistently imply a looming thread that is closely related to an immediate experience with time and life. This exhibit shows off six large scale color paintings from the artist’s latest Untitled series.
Wang has gained critical praise for his process-based paintings, which simultaneously reference traditional memento mori, temporality, repetition, and abstraction. The Coffin Paint series was inspired by a burial tradition he witnessed while growing up in Fujian province, southern China, where there still exists the local tradition of aged people preparing their waiting coffins with a layer of lacquer for each year they remain alive. A meditative symbol of acceptance and preparation, the coffin can incur several years’ worth of paint layers up until the moment of a person’s passing. Wang adds layers of paint to his canvas several times daily, with each layer covered upon the previous one. As the pigment accumulates, the surface of the canvas builds to a thick layer of paint that attains a nearly sculptural dimension. The paint naturally flows down along both right and left sides of the canvases.
BEIJING COMMUNE
798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
