Month: May 2018

Wen Na is a Chinese artist who through the mural painting manages to recreate fantastic worlds made of deities and ghosts. Wen Na’s wall painting is full of imagination and superb craftsmanship, so much so that it gained fame in the Chinese art scene and also attracted global attention.

Although the artist during college, in 1980, was more attracted to Western books and illustrations, traditional culture is more deeply rooted in his mind and his creations because of the influence of the family.
After graduating from the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts she left her job as an illustrator, for a newspaper supported by the state, to work as a freelance artist making murals, sculptures and all kinds of artistic creations related to her original images of celestial beings. The latter under the pen of the Chinese artist are rendered through bright colors and modern clothes, and it is only their way to ride the mists and clouds that remind people of the spirit of Chinese fairy tales.

In 2010, Wen Na made her first colorful mural in the village of Sanbao, Jingdezhen, where the famous ceramic artist Jackson Li had built his studio and an international ceramic institution popular with foreign artists and art lovers. The unexpected meeting later led to the creation of numerous impressive murals in Sanbao and then to the rise of Wen as a muralist.

Now, the murals on the Sanbao brick walls have become mottled after years of exposure to time. A wall has even been demolished but the artist believes that this is the beauty of wall painting.
“I prefer to paint on naturally shaped objects or exterior walls of architectures, so the murals will pass through their changes over time, as if they had their lives”.

In recent years, Wen Na has traveled to many places in the world to paint her original images on almost 100 walls.
Also in 2010 she painted on a wall for an art center in Italy, which attracted the attention of the western artistic community to her for the first time.
In that small town at the top of the mountains overlooking the blue Mediterranean bay, Wen painted two demigods “Qianshan and Zhaohai”, which literally means “pulling mountains” and “shining on the sea surface” in Chinese. In his imagination, Qianshan is a mountain spirit that connects and pulls the numerous hills with a rope. “Imagine being able to use a rope to pull on all the mountains, the goddess able to exert her power lightly would have an inexhaustible strength”.

Zhaohai refers to the spirit of the sea, because one night the artist had seen a stretch of white reflection of the moon on the surface of the sea. “Immersing in the scenarios, I asked myself if there is a god who illuminates the surface of the wide and dark sea every night for people”.

In 2017 she worked for the French luxury brand Hermes during her famous art exhibition “Wonderland” in Shanghai which included the opening of 11 showrooms that evoke a fantasy world with Parisian landscapes as a backdrop. Wen Na painted a mural entitled “Paris-Shanghai”, with a Parisian subway scene.

Visitors to her artistic space in the exhibition are introduced in a long corridor modeled on a subway station, where they find walls on both sides full of grotesque images of gods, goblins and other mythical creatures.

Like the ultramodern appearance of her Hermes “spirits”, Wen Na’s images derive from her childish indulgence in traditional culture, powerful imagination and appreciation of the culture and distinctive landscapes in which the mural is designed to fit.

“I am inspired by archaic Chinese elements such as the Dunhuang frescoes, stone tablets and classical literary works including The Pilgrimage to the West, The First Myth and The Classics of Mountains and Rivers”.

The “Chinese immortals” created by Wen Na have become in these days a sort of cultural icon in the Chinese artistic community.
“I did not learn traditional Chinese painting, so I use the Chinese brush the same way I use the pen, and I’m not particularly interested in painting materials, I actually paint on anything as long as its surface can be colored” she said. Through the painting on the walls, the explorer artist discovers that the images originally “flat” have been given an impression of three-dimensional space.

Exhibitions:
2010   Murales in Sanbao village
2010   “Qianshan and Zhaohai” Italy, for art center
2010 “Nine Songs of Dark Map” Songjiang, Shanghai
2013 “Numerous map” Beijing Hao restaurant
2013 “Shaxixi Sadness” Dali Xishe
2014 “Wen of the Scriptures”  Chinatown in Mauritius
2015 Pictures of the UGC cinema in Lyon on the glass wall
2015 “Map of the pearls” New Zealand
2017   “Wonderland” art exhibition in Shanghai,for Hermes

References:
http://www.sino-us.com/250/15335695086.html
https://kknews.cc/culture/4p6zqog.html

Jiang Pengyi was born in 1977 in Hunan, China. He attended the Beijing Institute of Art and Design, from which he graduated in 1999. Using photography as a catalyst for his carefully constructed scenes he captures uncertain stories that inspect the socio-political landscape that surrounds him.In fact, through photography it responds to the changing social, political and physical scenarios of China.

Jiang Pengyi is interested in the passage of time and its effects on society; he is particularly interested in the transformation of Beijing’s urban landscape and the possibilities of how it will be in many decades. His process of artistic creation often involves time-lapse photography and the gradual destruction of his material, while trying to eliminate the proof of the artist’s hand.In his series “Unregistered City” (2008-2010), Jiang Pengyi comments on the human condition by collecting miniature buildings together in desecrated landscapes – abandoned houses, lots of rubble – and by photographing the scenes.

Referring to 1,000-year-old landscape paintings and contemporary events in China, these photographs create complex and carefully constructed messages that take place as novels.

Starting from photographs related to urban landscapes and digital manipulation in his early works, Jiang goes on to reflect on a micro and introspective vision of inanimate objects that he represents through images of surreal views in the intrinsic light that exists in everyday objects and illuminate the traces left by existence of objects over time.
The existence of objects seems peculiar because it is illuminated by their splendor, their image and family function disappear. This disappearance of image and function seems to suggest a sort of destruction of our common association with objects, while the artist tries to reveal the independent existence of each object.

In a slightly later series of works, “Everything Illuminates” (2012), Jiang experiments with fluorescent powders and melted wax to create luminescent objects that radiate light, acting like miniature stars. Pour this mixture of wax and fluorescent powder onto the objects and photograph the substance using a long exposure. In the resulting images, the original functions of the objects are erased, leaving the viewer with a sense of destruction.

Exhibitions:
2008 – “Que Vive?” Moscow International Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia.
2009 – “Cheng Ran & Jiang Pengyi: Immersion and Distance”, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
2010 – “The butterfly effect”, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
2011 – “Be natural Be yourself”, Frac des Pays la Loire establishes Regional d’Art Contemporain, Nantes, France
2012 – “No Exit – Urban Space”, Biennial of photography in Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
2012 – “Architekturfotografie – Made in China”, MAKK, Köln, Germany
2013 – “REVEL,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
2014 – “Chinese Contemporary Photography: 2009-2014”, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2015 – “Asia unfamiliar: the second biennial in Beijing”, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China
2015 – “China 8 – Contemporary Art from China on the Rhine and the Ruhr”, Museum Lehmbruck, Duisburg, Germany
2015 – “China 8 – Contemporary Art from China on the Rhine and the Ruhr”, Changjiang International Biennial of Photography and Video,
2015 – “China 8 – Contemporary Art from China on the Rhine and the Ruhr”, Chongqing Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China
2016 – “Ghost in Flash: After Photography”, Taikang Space, Beijing, China
2016 – “The Shadow Never Lies”, Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2016 – “The Shadow Never Lies”, Art Basel, Hong Kong
Jiang’s work has been awarded with several awards, including the Aletti Art Prize for Photography (2011), the Jury Grand Prize from the Société Générale Chinese Art Awards (2010), and the Three Shadows Photography Award (2008).

References:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/jiang-pengyi
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/jiangpengyi
https://blindspotgallery.com/artist/jiang-pengyi/
http://www.aikedellarco.com/artist.php?id=141