Wang Qiang
Optical Games In A Limited Freedom: Eleonora Battiston
If we take into analyses the paintings of the series Limited Freedom, we could place Wang Qiang among those few artists that undertake a rigid geometrical abstraction. Already within the title, the artist reclaims the concept of freedom that, also in the West between the beginning of the Twentieth Century and the end of the Second World War, had ratified the birth of Abstractism. Abstractism, as a universal language, is in fact free from any kind of ties with reality and from any attempts with figuration. Wang Qiang, as abstracters did in their times, deprives painting of the realism bestowing it with the faculty of the word and turning it into a tool to express the subjectivity of the artist and a place for the visual immersion of the spectator.
In the Athens of the IV B.C, Platone had already written something about painting: "for what concern the beauty of the shapes, I don't think about what most people could imagine, for example beautiful painted bodies. I rather mean the straight line or the circle, the plane and solid figures, designed with the ruler and the SQUADRA. I believe these figures are themselves very beautiful, because they transmit a particular pleasure".
But what kind of pleasure could we ever find in the mess of colors and in the overlapping of lines? The artist refuses to give the spectator interpretational hints and his canvases become just a simple pretext for contemplation because, as Leonardo in the Fifth Century pointed out, "messy and indefinite things stimulate the spirit to new inventions". Hence, the meditative quality conferred by a meticulously maniacal geometry is undoubted!
The figurative "emptiness" of Wang Qiang's canvases confers full scope to the feelings and emotions of the observer who carries out a somewhat mystical submersion in the colors letting his retina being confused by the chromatic cheats and optical games created by the lines.These works enclose the intrinsic value of recalling only themselves just like the masterpieces of the Op Art (Optical Art) anticipated in the Thirties by Victor Vasarely. Through the linear variations (vertical, horizontal and diagonal) and the contrasts of colors, he experiments the effects of optical stimulation and the false impression of movement that has been created.
However, for which reason is this "freedom""limited"? Only approaching the canvases, we can comprehend the mock and amusement of these artworks: the patterns are prefixed and they already exist, and the newly painted part is only partial. The canvases are already colored and printed with the lines and motifs of which, only in some portion of the space, the artist inverts and upsets the direction, creating with the brush geometries of geometries and making these labyrinths even more complex.
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1968 |
Born in Jiangsu Province |
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1994 |
Graduated in Xiamen University |
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Present |
Lives and works in Nanjing |
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Solo Exhibitions |
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2013 |
Creative Realms by Wang Qiang, Red Gate Gallery |
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2008 |
Optical Games in a Limited Freedom, Marella Gallery, Beijing |
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1993 |
Paintings, Xiamen University, Xiamen |
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Group Exhibitions |
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2018 |
The First Asia- Pacific, Nanjing University Art Museum, Nanjing |
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Hello, 3rd Nanjing Contemporary, Art Museum of Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing |
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Transfixed, Qidu Gallery, Shanghai |
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2017 |
Red Gate on the Move, Red Gate Gallery, Beijing |
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Surmount & Behave, Baijia Lake Museum, Nanjing |
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2016 |
3rd Nanjing International Art Festival - HISTORICODE: Scarcity & Supply, Baijia Lake Museum, Nanjing |
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2015 |
2nd Nanjing International Art Festival – A Beautiful New World International Contemporary Art, Nanjing International Exhibition Center |
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Within Sight: Chinese New Painting at Post Financial Crisis, Poly Art Museum, Beijing |
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Blow-up – New Chinese Painting in Post Financial Crisis, Chongqing Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing |
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2014 |
2nd Nanjing International Art Festival, Nanjing International Expo Center, Nanjing |
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2013 |
2nd Yan Wenliang Art, Suzhou Museum of Art, Suzhou |
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2011 |
Red Gate Launch Pad – Celebrating 10 Years of Artists in Residence, Red Gate Gallery |
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2010 |
Nanjing Biennale, Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum |
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2009 |
China· China, Milan Art Museum, Milan |
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Paradise Lost, Fun Art Space, Beijing |
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2007 |
Fractal Image, Nanjing Museum |
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2006 |
Artists in Residence, Red Gate Gallery |
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Fancy Dream, Marella Gallery, Beijing |
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Fancy Dream, Marella Gallery, Milan |
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2005 |
Three -Year Chinese Art, Nanjing Museum |
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2004 |
Double Imagination, Shenghua Art Center, Nanjing |
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2003 |
Digital City, Melbourne |
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2002 |
Time, Space, and Me, Xiamen University Sino - European Art Center, Xiamen |
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Cement, Chambers Fine Art, New York |
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New Urbanism, Guangdong Art Museum, Guangdong |
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Daydream, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing |
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W & G Art Pair, Sanmi Gallery, Nanjing |
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2001 |
Traces of Time, Nanjing |
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Close and Far Away, Nanjing |
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2000 |
Human Beings and Animals, Qingliangshan Park, Nanjing |
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1999 |
Ideas and Concepts, Shanghai |
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Orientation and Meanings, Nanjing |
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1st International Exhibition of Chinese Installation Art, Hong Kong |
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1998 |
2000-1, Nanjing Normal University |
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1997 |
Modern City and Contemporary Art, Jiangsu Art Museum |
My recent work is about a return to nature, which takes the form of a couple of fruit trees or a mountain. I feel that only by being in nature will one feel extremely peaceful; where one can find a serenity that emanates from the inner self. It is a place free of slogans and there is nothing to fathom. By returning to this boundless inner sanctum, one can access a life force. Perhaps it is just that for me? I feel closer to myself as I channel this internal energy into my painting.
Wang Qiang
