Art+ Shanghai Gallery is pleased to announce “Riffling Through History”, a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Wang Haichuan. The exhibition VIP Preview will be Saturday, June 5th, 2021 from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM, with the artist in attendance.
The exhibition will be on view from June 5th through July 18th, 2021
Art+ Shanghai Gallery team and the artist Wang Haichuan are looking forward to enjoying a beautiful opening with you.
Sincerely,
Art+ Shanghai Gallery Team
VIP Preview: June 5th, 2021 from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Venue: Art+ Shanghai Gallery
191 South Suzhou Road (Near Sichuan Road)
Huangpu District, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 6333 7223
Tuesday to Sunday, 10:30 AM - 6:30 PM (Closed Monday)
[email protected]
www.artplusshanghai.com
The exhibition will be on view from June 5th through July 18th, 2021
Art+ Shanghai Gallery team and the artist Wang Haichuan are looking forward to enjoying a beautiful opening with you.
Sincerely,
Art+ Shanghai Gallery Team
VIP Preview: June 5th, 2021 from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Venue: Art+ Shanghai Gallery
191 South Suzhou Road (Near Sichuan Road)
Huangpu District, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 6333 7223
Tuesday to Sunday, 10:30 AM - 6:30 PM (Closed Monday)
[email protected]
www.artplusshanghai.com
About the exhibition:
In his artistic practice, Wang Haichuan has developed a unique language to dismantle reality and devise a new approach to understanding the world. In his painting and sculptural works, his eye for pairing disparate elements for stunning effect belies a need for a coherent narrative. Displaced from their original contexts, the figures, shapes or pieces of old furniture remake themselves as something beyond preconceived ideas of the boundaries of a respective medium. This manner of working has allowed him to develop an aesthetic playing with both figurative and abstract techniques, eliciting an organic response from viewers rather than dictating their impression. Including references that run the gamut from daily life to architecture and the history of art, Wang skims history as he constructs a new chronicle of the present. Just like collective memory, Wang’s artworks offer no definitive testimony, merely a compilation of singular impressions to be considered as a whole.
Wang’s ongoing fascination with collective memory and the architecture of collectivism is rendered most clearly in his works and programs engaging the Tong Yuan Ju (铜元局) neighborhood in Chongqing beginning in 2009. Previously the site of coppermanufactory workshops and related dormitory-style housing units, what began as a plan to explore the architectural contours of the community evolved into a series of works examining how urban forces rewire collective frameworks into those of the individual. Wang returned to the people and spaces of Tong Yuan Ju again and again over the years, witnessing the neighborhood’s material and societal transformation as it played out a narrative common in rapidly developing cities in China.
Wang Haichuan’s backgroundin architecture and landscape design is a constant presence in his work. Although it manifests distinctly in his sculptural methodology, it is keenly visible in his paintings. His conception of space is revealed both in the architectural references he makes as well as the lack of perspective orphysical structuring in his works on canvas. The six paintings named with “Modernism” and then subsequently numbered feature a cacophony of imagery and colors, making far-reaching references never repeated or fully demystified. A landscape, an emu, a modernist building, and a partially rendered figure all blend into one dimension across the canvas’s surface. There is no rhyme orreason to the proportional size or positioning of each reference, only their existence together in the artist’s imagination.
Not merely decorative, his sculptural works repurpose fragments of furniture, giving the pieces new life as part of a functional object. The worn and well-loved scraps of Yin-YangChair (Yin) and Yin-Yang Chair (Yang) once again have the capacity to offer rest and relief in their regenerated forms. Similarly, the wood cast out from the Soviet-style buildings in Tong Yuan Ju has the opportunity to house living things once more as Birdcage #3 and Birdcage #5. The stark lines andconfigurations of all Wang’s practice mimic the Constructivist and Geometricist movements from which he draws inspiration. These three-dimensional works are made all the more poignant as the artist extracted from communal windows, doors and furniture to construct commodities for individual use, exploring the decentralization of labor production and reorganization of urban centers.
关于展览
在王海川的艺术实践中,生长出了一套用于拆解现实的独特语言体系,一种认知世界的全新方式。运用在绘画和雕塑作品里,他的方法能把全不相干的元素拼凑,效果极妙,若追寻连贯叙事只会步入歧途。无论人物、形状或那些旧家具的碎片,都从原生语境脱离,自我重塑以至向媒介的既定框架外延伸。这种创作方法导向的是一场美学游戏,结合具象和抽象技法,启发观者积极参与回应,而非一味主导观者的体验。王海川的素材囊括日常生活、建筑和艺术历史,他翻阅着历史的书页,为当下现实编撰新的时间线。用他自己的话来说:“我的绘画涉及的是一个集体记忆的问题,也就是我们能从我们的历史中找到什么”。正如集体记忆本身,王海川的作品并不指向确凿的结论,只是将种种散落的迹象收录汇集成整体。
王海川一直对集体记忆和集体主义建筑十分痴迷,这也尤其清晰地体现在他2009年创作的关于重庆铜元局街区的作品项目中。这里原是铸造铜元的厂房,相连着筒子楼住宅,王海川本来打算研究的是这里的建筑形态,后逐步演变出一连串系列作品,探究城市发展如何影像个人之于集体的认知框架。在2012年和倪昆的一次采访中,王海川描述他正逐渐成为一个“图像收集者”的角色。这个自我定位和他作品中迷人的拼贴效果相呼应,也正符合他将零散意象成功在画中并置,这种独一无二的方法。
王海川在建筑和景观设计领域的经验在他的作品中一直有所呈现。不仅明显影响了他的雕塑方法,在绘画中同样也有清晰脉络。他对空间的理解体现在对建筑元素的使用、对透视效果的削弱和对画面物理结构的掌握中。六幅以“现代主义”命名的连续系列绘画由看似杂乱无章的图像和色彩构成,元素之间的出处甚远,没有一个重复出现或能被清晰定义。图像从固有语境中释放,无论出处高低皆能使用,既能提取网络世代的高饱和图像也能盘点历史。虽然他认为作品中的所有元素都是平等的,王海川最后往往会提取其中一个元素作为视觉中心,并以此为画作命名。
In his artistic practice, Wang Haichuan has developed a unique language to dismantle reality and devise a new approach to understanding the world. In his painting and sculptural works, his eye for pairing disparate elements for stunning effect belies a need for a coherent narrative. Displaced from their original contexts, the figures, shapes or pieces of old furniture remake themselves as something beyond preconceived ideas of the boundaries of a respective medium. This manner of working has allowed him to develop an aesthetic playing with both figurative and abstract techniques, eliciting an organic response from viewers rather than dictating their impression. Including references that run the gamut from daily life to architecture and the history of art, Wang skims history as he constructs a new chronicle of the present. Just like collective memory, Wang’s artworks offer no definitive testimony, merely a compilation of singular impressions to be considered as a whole.
Wang’s ongoing fascination with collective memory and the architecture of collectivism is rendered most clearly in his works and programs engaging the Tong Yuan Ju (铜元局) neighborhood in Chongqing beginning in 2009. Previously the site of coppermanufactory workshops and related dormitory-style housing units, what began as a plan to explore the architectural contours of the community evolved into a series of works examining how urban forces rewire collective frameworks into those of the individual. Wang returned to the people and spaces of Tong Yuan Ju again and again over the years, witnessing the neighborhood’s material and societal transformation as it played out a narrative common in rapidly developing cities in China.
Wang Haichuan’s backgroundin architecture and landscape design is a constant presence in his work. Although it manifests distinctly in his sculptural methodology, it is keenly visible in his paintings. His conception of space is revealed both in the architectural references he makes as well as the lack of perspective orphysical structuring in his works on canvas. The six paintings named with “Modernism” and then subsequently numbered feature a cacophony of imagery and colors, making far-reaching references never repeated or fully demystified. A landscape, an emu, a modernist building, and a partially rendered figure all blend into one dimension across the canvas’s surface. There is no rhyme orreason to the proportional size or positioning of each reference, only their existence together in the artist’s imagination.
Not merely decorative, his sculptural works repurpose fragments of furniture, giving the pieces new life as part of a functional object. The worn and well-loved scraps of Yin-YangChair (Yin) and Yin-Yang Chair (Yang) once again have the capacity to offer rest and relief in their regenerated forms. Similarly, the wood cast out from the Soviet-style buildings in Tong Yuan Ju has the opportunity to house living things once more as Birdcage #3 and Birdcage #5. The stark lines andconfigurations of all Wang’s practice mimic the Constructivist and Geometricist movements from which he draws inspiration. These three-dimensional works are made all the more poignant as the artist extracted from communal windows, doors and furniture to construct commodities for individual use, exploring the decentralization of labor production and reorganization of urban centers.
关于展览
在王海川的艺术实践中,生长出了一套用于拆解现实的独特语言体系,一种认知世界的全新方式。运用在绘画和雕塑作品里,他的方法能把全不相干的元素拼凑,效果极妙,若追寻连贯叙事只会步入歧途。无论人物、形状或那些旧家具的碎片,都从原生语境脱离,自我重塑以至向媒介的既定框架外延伸。这种创作方法导向的是一场美学游戏,结合具象和抽象技法,启发观者积极参与回应,而非一味主导观者的体验。王海川的素材囊括日常生活、建筑和艺术历史,他翻阅着历史的书页,为当下现实编撰新的时间线。用他自己的话来说:“我的绘画涉及的是一个集体记忆的问题,也就是我们能从我们的历史中找到什么”。正如集体记忆本身,王海川的作品并不指向确凿的结论,只是将种种散落的迹象收录汇集成整体。
王海川一直对集体记忆和集体主义建筑十分痴迷,这也尤其清晰地体现在他2009年创作的关于重庆铜元局街区的作品项目中。这里原是铸造铜元的厂房,相连着筒子楼住宅,王海川本来打算研究的是这里的建筑形态,后逐步演变出一连串系列作品,探究城市发展如何影像个人之于集体的认知框架。在2012年和倪昆的一次采访中,王海川描述他正逐渐成为一个“图像收集者”的角色。这个自我定位和他作品中迷人的拼贴效果相呼应,也正符合他将零散意象成功在画中并置,这种独一无二的方法。
王海川在建筑和景观设计领域的经验在他的作品中一直有所呈现。不仅明显影响了他的雕塑方法,在绘画中同样也有清晰脉络。他对空间的理解体现在对建筑元素的使用、对透视效果的削弱和对画面物理结构的掌握中。六幅以“现代主义”命名的连续系列绘画由看似杂乱无章的图像和色彩构成,元素之间的出处甚远,没有一个重复出现或能被清晰定义。图像从固有语境中释放,无论出处高低皆能使用,既能提取网络世代的高饱和图像也能盘点历史。虽然他认为作品中的所有元素都是平等的,王海川最后往往会提取其中一个元素作为视觉中心,并以此为画作命名。