Wang Qingsong

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Wang Qingsong

[edit] Introduction

Wang Qingsong emerged as an artist in China at a time when a rich seam of art was wholly informed by satirical reworkings of Pop Art ideas gleaned from Andy Warhol and taken to new heights by Jeff Koons. Notions of the bright, garish and throwaway attributes of contemporary life, and in particular capitalist consumerism that was making inroads to the Mainland, made sense to the Chinese artists who found themselves living in a nation whose economy and stage of socio-industrial development made plenty of provision for kitsch in everyday life. With the influx of western consumerism, products and symbols of modern convenience, from fast food to fashion, household items to the trappings of contemporary life, cheap and cheerful as they were, found ready embrace by the Chinese as the nation enthusiastically engaged in reform and sweeping modernisation from the mid-1980s. A decade later, it had reached overwhelming proportions. It was here, that Wang Qingsong, like many artists of his generation, found the inspiration for a new approach to visual social commentary.

Also important to the emergence of this artistic trend was that the 1990s in China saw the dawn of high-technology breaking on their horizon and affordably within reach. Computers were suddenly cheap and plentiful, along with all the necessary pirated software to turn the most impoverished artist into a one-person cottage industry. As photography made broad inroads to fine art in the West, so in China it became a medium for the masses of young artists who wished to experiment with composite imagery. Whilst many used the medium to create snapshots still rooted in a realist narrative, Wang Qingsong made the digital composite his forte. Parodying the new social ideals and pleasures in life, he took to portraying himself as Buddha, Shiva, Christ, a plethora of revered icons enmeshed in lavish clusters of the consumer products of mass culture.

These works have their place in the moment in time to which they owed the nascence, but times change and Wang Qingsong changed too, keeping abreast of social issues and topics of contemporary debate, all the while maintaining a healthy cynicism and underlying jibe at the new ideals that emerged. So his visual language drew from sources as varied as traditional New Year's pictures, classical ink compositions, latter-day battle scenes and religious and political iconography. All the serious elements were counterbalanced by the equally iconographic signage of global branding. As he did this, Wang Qingsong also chose to mock the imbalance that developing nations exhibit in a fawning embrace of the trappings of the world's leading economies, and a willingness to kowtow before the pantheon of materialism. Thus, he reduced the scale of Chinese figures, playing with the subtle nuances of religious and history painting that represents power versus insignificance as an exaggerated presence versus a diminished one. The resultant works are imbued with a strong streak of indignation.

Having ousting his frustration at the relationship between China and the West, and as China itself began to gain confidence, Wang Qingsong turned his comment to the modern 'version' of history that is taught to all, and the fog surrounding a clear vision of the past and the actual impact of its legacy. Here, we have new works titled Past or Present which present a solitary individual gazing up against the kind of visual ideal that does remain tangible in the gloaming. That much is obvious but where does the struggle and sorrow, its grand future and cost to society figure into the contemporary panorama?