Wang Guangle Made His Coffin…
Wang Guangle @ Beijing Commune
until May 14
According to tradition in his hometown, elderly people will paint their coffins with one layer each year. Wang Guangle has adopted this to the canvas, in remarkably more colorful layers than we might see on anything to be buried underground. As always, his work reveals time, patience, and the somewhat unexpected results of turning concept into canvas.
The artist himself is extremely popular among Chinese collectors and has a great reputation among artists, but many “outsider” viewers (Laowai) fail to see the appeal. Unfortunately, this show does not reflect what I consider some of Wang’s best works, those (I’m judging by what I saw on the gallery website) which are now represented by Beijing Commune.
His early works, realist canvases featuring afternoon light hitting the terrazzo floor, reveal ideas essential to the artist’s development; they were not on show at the opening. Later works where he grinds thick layers of dried paint into what looks like actual terrazzo on the canvas were neither on display, nor were photographs of his legendary performance in his Suojiacun studio (read more below). The terrazzo pattern and coffin paint series are his trademarks. A more detailed description is below, in a short artist introduction written for “Looking for Me” (2008)
WANG Guangle
王光乐
Wang Guangle radiates a wisdom that makes him seem old before his time, or perhaps it’s just that shaved head that lends him a certain monkish quality.
Terrazzo tile has been his artistic trope since 2002. This floor tiling, common in Chinese institutional architecture, is made of tiny flecks of marble suspended in polymer resin; Wang Guangle uses incredibly exacting methods to transpose the details of Terrazzo to the canvas. His earliest Terrazzo paintings were of rooms with terrazzo floors, streaks of light played upon the floor. Abandoning the notion of three-dimensional spaces, he turned his canvas into the terrazzo itself, thus completing an evolution from Realism into conceptual artist.
In 2004, the news that his Suojiacun studio was scheduled for demolition that inspired Wang Guangle to spend three months covering the 6 x 9 meter wall of his studio with “terrazzo,” only to see it knocked down upon completion. This performance, an exercise of focus and impermanence, is comparable to the Buddhist devotional practice of sand mandalas. But Wang Guangle is secular, his practice thoroughly modern, atemporal, socio-politically and culturally neutral. Later experiments included painting concrete objects with “terrazzo,” and layering thicker coats of paint on the canvas; after they dry he grinds them into a flat, highly realistic surface.
Throughout his tedious creative process, Wang Guangle ponders the elimination of time and the changes it imparts, therein reflecting the perseverance that is important to his entire practice. The time invested in each canvas is apparent with one glance, for it is the accumulation of such processes that ultimately delivers the artist’s concepts.
Mural Painter Lee Bowerman Fine Art Historic Murals…
Mostly borderline amazing….
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