23 x 16.5 cm (each)
Wei Xiaoguang: Mellow Facts
15 October – 26 November 2022
Private View | Saturday, 15 October 2022, 4 – 7 pm
Unit 102, 225 Anfu Lu, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200031
Tuesday to Saturday, by appointment only between 12 – 6 pm
For Immediate Release
Facts are not responsible for one’s feelings.
One gets close to understanding facts through one’s emotional reactions.
One should properly position oneself when facing facts.
Facts are responsible for one’s feelings.
Facts contain one’s emotional needs.
Facts should find their proper position for one.
— Wei Xiaoguang, October 2022
CHRISTINE PARK GALLERY is pleased to present Mellow Facts, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Wei Xiaoguang. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and the first exhibition after his return to China.
This exhibition presents the artist’s latest paintings. The works continue the purple tones of his previous works, first unveiled at West Bund Art Fair & Design in November 2021. His current body of works present a pale and soft abstract scene with dark “layers” in conversation with each other. Wei Xiaoguang creates paintings with a photographic clarity and realism that belies their complex layers of visual and conceptual contradictions. He sees his works as examples of how self-conscious painting mannerism functions as a critical method in this post “death of painting” period, where both representation and abstraction do not need to hide in contradictions.
Wei understands mannerism as a way to accept decisions in art as finite, and to conceptualize the art-making process as a predetermined set of rules and procedures that function as their building elements, just like the more or less visible pixels (picture elements) used in digital media. The combination of familiar methods and pictorial styles has been informing his works in different ways: retinal form to conceptual form.
In this exhibition, three series of his works are presented: Purple Thoughts, Stories of Options, and 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999.
The Purple Thoughts series consists of five works, four of which are exhibited in this exhibition, and continues the artist’s previous Purple Thoughts series that premiered in 2021 with darker tones and color. Under the large area of purple and gray fusion, the tone of the picture is pale, softer, gentle and somewhat cold. The contrast with the clear, figurative and realistic layers of the images is striking. The artist highlights the constructive elements in different degrees - a half nibbled apple; an art delivery truck with a “Free Shipping” logo, and a set of images of burning fire directly juxtaposed on the pale purple screen of the work. Wei uses the two elements in a concise way to reorganize a different way of thinking.
In both Rigged and Purple Thoughts on Business, images of fire are collaged on the surface of the painting. Constituting an extra layer of the work, these images of fire are of same size and composition as Stories of Options, a series of small fire paintings. In the main exhibition room, four works from Stories of Options are installed on the opposite wall, mirroring the images of fire in Rigged and Purple Thoughts on Business.
The small exhibition room of the gallery features 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999, a set of 14 small paintings with images of fire and the number 9. This is the first set in the series that shows the artist’s inquiry into the concept of quantification and the concept of a great number (for example, 9 in China)that is fantasized in one’s mind.
The elements of the images in the paintings, which vary in speed and depth of perception, demonstrate the dimensions of the way we observe internal and external reality on a psychological level. The volumetric proportions of the whole and its parts constantly remind the viewer of the concise binary in the work, a juxtaposition of the history of painting and the present common conditions.
For further information or press inquiries, please contact the gallery at info@christinepark.net or WeChat Official Account cpgallery.
About the Artist
Born in 1986 in Inner Mongolia, China, Wei Xiaoguang gained a BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in Beijing in 2010 and an MFA from Hunter College in New York in 2014. Overcoming the distinction between representation and abstraction, Wei Xiaoguang’s work is deeply embedded in the post “Death of Painting” period. By carefully modulating the effects of light, textures, and surfaces, his paintings effectively combine multiple visual languages and artistic traditions.
He has exhibited and performed at Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Art Museum in Beijing and lectured at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the Institute of Management of Art and Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Shanghai. He has exhibited with Chambers Fine Art in New York and Galleries Urs Miele in Beijing and participated in the fairs in New York, Shanghai, and Singapore. He lives and works in Beijing and Shanghai.
