Art Madrid'23 – First retrospective of Wang Guangyi in Europe

 

 

Wang Guangyi is the "other" artist icon of Chinese contemporary art and now has his first retrospective in Europe, in the halls of MAC a Coruna entitled The Relics of believers.

 

 

 

 

With his work analyzes the revolutionary power of the image, a common tool to all civilizations, and so in the exhibition there are a lot of references to political posters, religious imagery, photographs of the star system, a collection of images in which it finally reflects the concept of faith, as a unifying homogenizer engine for the societies that is common to the most diverse civilizations.

 

 

 

 

The exhibition of MAC, Museum of Contemporary Art Gas Natural Fenosa A Coruna, offers a unified experience to understand the production and full life of the author in an environment of concentration and meditation.

 

 

"This anthology serves as a synthesis of 30 years of work, ranging from his first series of 1985 entitled 'The back of humanity', to 'The relics of believers', a work of this summer, made for exposure and that entitled the sample. Galician art critic Anton Castro, one of the curators of the exhibition, explains: "The intention was to present this together as a single body and not as a gallery of works in chronological order," he adds.

 

 

 

Wang Guangyi (Harbin, China, 1957) was born into a humble family and suffered the rigors of Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) being enlisted in the Red Guard, labeled "intellectual" and sentenced to a reeducation camp. As an adult, it is one of the biggest names of the socalled Movimiento 85, humanist and renewing movement  born with the aim of revolt against a stagnant culture, provoke desire to live and establish a new spiritual model.

 


The exhibition includes representative works of his career, among which, the paintings of the Great Criticism series in which colorful images of Maoist propaganda mixes with Western well known logos and trademarks in an exercise in paradox in which politics, religion and capitalism are suggested as ways to improve our lives. In MAC you can also see his first paintings - with a cold and faceless humanity-, works of this year - a reinterpretation of Don Quixote- and, of course, the installation Relics of Believers, created especially for this exhibition and that gathers images of political leaders like John F. Kennedy or Mao Zedong with samples of uniforms.

 

Wang Guangyi has exhibited in many of the most prestigious museums of contemporary art in the world, as the Centre Pompidou in Paris or the Saatchi Gallery of London and has a great commercial success since the early 90s of last century.

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.