Wang Qingsong by Thircuir Ltd.

Wang Qingsong : Photographs

Essay by Jérémie Thircuir All images selected from Wang Qingsong’s work

A Life Jérémie Thircuir Wang Qingsong’s fate has been linked to that of his homeland. He has conceived his work as a reaction to the changes China has undergone during the past thirty years. Wang Qingsong was born in North-Eastern China in 1966, the same year the Cultural Revolution began. As a child, he moved with his parents to Hubei province, in Central China, where his father found a job in the oil fields. When he was only thirteen years old, his father died, leaving him no choice but to take over his father’s job in order to support his family. That is what he did for the following eight years. Wang Qingsong always felt that he was different. He rarely spoke, and others found him strange. Deep inside, he always nourished the idea of becoming an artist. In spite of his job, every year he tried without success to pass the entrance exams to China’s fine arts academies. Finally, on his fifth attempt, he managed to get accepted into the prestigious painting department of Sichuan’s Fine Arts Academy. 5

In 1993, a year after Deng Xiaoping had made his speech advocating the speeding up of China’s economy, he received his painter’s diploma. He then decided to go to Beijing, the capital at the center of the country’s artistic renewal. There he discovered a city in full transformation, opening up to a market economy and abandoning itself to frantic consumption. Western symbols were changing the landscape: drinking Coca Cola and eating at McDonald’s was the latest trend. Colourful new fashions were replacing the drab uniforms of old. The Maoist and Confucian values on which he was raised gradually disappeared and were replaced with the irresistible lust for pleasure and personal enrichment that was shared by all. Wang Qingsong was poor. The little savings he had on his arrival were soon gone. He lived in artists’ villages on the outskirts of the city, but urban growth, demolitions and increases in rent kept forcing him to move further and further away. He was excluded from this mad race for wealth and pleasure, which he did not understand yet was nevertheless fascinated by. Faced with the excessive speed of this evolution he questioned the relevance of his medium. Wang decided to give up painting – portraits of men whose faces are enclosed in plastic bags – for photography, the medium

he felt was best suited to capture this emerging society. He then began to tell the stories of this new China, the camera replacing his brushes and bodies taking the place of color swatches, but with his training as a painter ever present in his work through his sense of composition. Wang Qingsong observed these movements, from poverty to wealth, from destitution to abundance, from communism to capitalism. He would make it the central subject of his early works such as Can I cooperate with you? and Finding fun. His work is a reaction to the life he lives and the things he sees. At its heart is the expression of his inability to comprehend the world standing before him. Wang Qingsong thus creates a diary of contemporary China. Henceforth we see the duality of his position: he is both an actor and a spectator of these transformations, an active witness of history being written before his very eyes. Wang Qingsong stages himself just as he stages society; as a professor in Preschool, as a homeless man in Tramp, or as the host in China Mansion. He recomposes his role throughout his photographs. His beginnings as a photographer tie him to the Gaudi Art movement, initiated by the critic Li Xianting, whom

we can see as the central figure in Night revels of Lao Li. This movement, born in the Songzhuang artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; village, thirty kilometres to the east of Beijing, brought together many artists producing kitsch, colourful works that explore the confusion and contradictions of a country that is overwhelmed by the ongoing economic reforms. Under the influence of this movement, Wang Qingsongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vocabulary falls into place. He has created an iconography integrating humor and derision with Western and Chinese symbolism. One discovers wry winks at Ingres, Manet, Botticelli in works such as China Mansion or Romantique. These references to art history are devoid of their original meaning and context. They are diverted, distorted and superimposed to denounce the way in which culture has become a mere commodity. Mimicking this perception, the beauty of the original works becomes a confused, clumsy and vulgar caricature. Wang Qingsong uses these elements as the words of the visual story that will make up the image. As in Chinese poetry, where the beauty of a character is expressed as much by its meaning as by the calligraphy with which it is written, Wang Qingsong plays with symbols to give substance to his photographs. He assembles, recomposes and often incongruously draws together ideas in order to better represent the motion of society and the world.

He is also influenced by traditional Chinese iconography, which he uses and updates in his images. Although his ideas go beyond it, Chinese reality serves as a starting point for his work. In order to place his images in this setting and insert his visual grammar within it, he draws inspiration from the classics of Chinese painting, which he then appropriates. He revisits a work by Han Xizai in Night revels of Lao Li and Song Dynasty paintings in Bathouse and Knickknack Peddler. He uses these traditional forms as a framework, employing large formats, which remind us of scrolls where storytelling follows the time and the movement of the eye. The picture becomes a lively little theatre that gives the viewer enough time to see the many facets of a complex reality unfolding before him. This could not be achieved in a single instant shot. As one can see, Wang Qingsongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work incorporates a deep reflection on the nature of the image and its semantic mechanisms. This reflection too is inspeparable from his experience. Wang Qingsong grew up surrounded by revolutionary imagery which left a deep mark on his childhood and later influenced him in his creations. He draws on these manipulated and reconstructed icons that are used as a

medium for propaganda: images illustrating slogans that tell the masses of a glorious, productive and united China; images of the famed soldier Lei Feng and the workers or farmers that recur as defining symbols of a popular iconography that everyone can rally around and relate to. However, as illustrated in his triptych Past, Present and Future, he realizes that aesthetics are not inherently linked to the ideology they are meant to embody. The idea is not dependent on the form of the representation. Having understood the power of propaganda and revolutionary imagery, Wang Qingsong implements their tactics. Freed of their dogmatic discourse, he plays with these familiar forms to serve his message and its dissemination. He erases what is superfluous, simplifying the message to make it accessible to the masses. It is art for the people. This apparent simplicity of the image, and more importantly its efficiency, is what gives Wang Qingsongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works their personality. Unlike their counterparts in the past, his works seek to understand the nature of events without imposing an ideology. They are built to create a discourse, a friction between time and civilizations. Traditional China, modern China and the globalized West oppose and confront each other to create a new cultural territory.

When he wakes up in the morning, Wang Qingsong turns on his television. He watches the news. The false objectivity of this constant stream of images leaves him deeply perplexed. He sees only fragmentary visions of a reality that is far more complex. This is the reason he ironically defines his art as a sort of journalism. Paradoxically, it is by constructing and manipulating the image that he will humourously bring out the truth of a situation. Since the turn of this century, the situation in China has changed dramatically. The feeling that â&#x20AC;&#x153;everything is new, everything is possibleâ&#x20AC;?, of this new openness, has become the norm. Since 2001, China has been gaining confidence: it has joined the WTO and Beijing was chosen to host the Olympic Games. Foreigners have begun to flow into the country, thus accelerating its internationalization. Chinese artists, of whom Wang Qingsong is one of the most famous, travel around the world for their exhibitions. Collectors fight over their works. For Wang Qingsong, it is like stepping through the looking glass: he is reaping the benefits of economic growth, breaking records at auctions and has become one of the most expensive photographers in the world. In his work, the pinnacle of kitsch and the critique of consumerism have given way to an expression of

social issues. In Offerings and Temple, he criticizes the commodification of religion and the loss of spirituality. In Competition, he denounces the invasion of public space by brand names. In Dormitory, he exposes the plight of migrant workers. Tackling problems as diverse as education, ecology, and the culture crisis, Wang Qingsong is an artist whose deep political engagement is firmly grounded in the reality of the world he is a part of. By producing increasingly spectacular photographs, he reminds us that nothing is impossible in this new China, where means and ambitions are equal. The commercial success enjoyed by these artists nourishes their work and pushes the limits of what they can create to heights that are unimaginable to many Western artists. Fueled by his desire for the huge and the spectacular, Wang Qingsongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographs are sometimes limited only by technology, as is the case with The History of Monuments, whose 42-metre-width is the maximum length of a roll of photographic paper. His stagings often require months of preparation and hundreds, even thousands of extras. Wang Qingsong still retains his artistic lexicon but he is enlarging it. His images have become deeper. To the kitsch of Gilbert & George or David Lachapelle, which marked his earlier works, he has added the excess of

Andreas Gursky, the cinematographic staging of Gregory Crewdson, the symbolic juggling of Jeff Wall, and the masses of bodies of Spencer Tunick. The borders between East and West seem to have disappeared. Present and history are now one. The timelessness of his work and his conception of humanity and its nature, make Wang Qingsong a leading artist of our era. By observing societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s movements, he detects humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s madness. Despite its colour and the humour that stands out from it, Wang Qingsongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is fundamentally bleak. Parody and mockery become the only tolerable means to describe his pessimism with regard to the dramatic mechanism of human history.

Can I Cooperate with You? 我能跟你合作吗？ 2000

Casting a critical gaze on how East meets West in a globalized world, Can I Cooperate With You? draws its imagery from a traditional Chinese painting of an official paying a visit to minority groups. Wang’s version replaces the original figure of central power with a blasé westerner surrounded by equally bored, garishly dressed women and girls wielding large fans emblazoned with logos of western brands. Wang thus illustrates the massive and invasive arrival of Western consumerism, as well as the inequalities and the lack of comprehension that it generates in a people who find themselves excluded from it.

Finding Fun ć&#x2030;žäš? 2000

The opening up and modernization of China have given rise to new aspirations. The nascent middle class is frenetically discovering the easy and instantaneous pleasures of consumerism. In this classically structured work, Wang Qingsong revisits the metaphor of the opium den, recalling the decadence of Shanghai in the 1920â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. It is a moral work that creates a parallel between the drug and the immediate and fake pleasures of consumerism.

Three Graces 三女神 2002

Drawing on the famous painting by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Three Graces illustrates the complexities of our relationship with the culture of the past. It is a perfect example of Wang Qingsong’s work. It employs several elements of the artist’s vocabulary. The painting, as a known and identifiable form, becomes the symbol of classical culture. Gold represents consumer society’s desire for wealth. The Graces, whose beauty has disappeared, have become vulgar caricatures, presented in an absurd universe. Thus assembled, these elements create the meaning of the work. Classical culture, under the sanctifying gaze of our modern society, seems to become a parody of itself. The work’s renown triumphs over its original beauty. Hidden behind a tree, Wang Qingsong observes the scene bewildered. He is the witness that calls out to us.

Knickknack Peddler 卖货郎 2002

This photo’s composition is based on a Song Dynasty painting, but the traditional characters of the original have been replaced by children, who symbolize nascent consumer society. Dressed in worn and dull clothing, Wang Qingsong, the knickknack peddler, is all that remains of the past. He seems lost in the image, ridiculous among the dozens of kitsch and colourful objects that surround him.

Preschool 学前班 2002

This work highlights the contradictions that education generates in contemporary China. Wang Qingsong, dressed as a teacher, a symbol of traditional Confucianism, shows his class the socialist slogan “A Better Tomorrow”. Surrounding him are children, budding consumers, who seem more fascinated by material objects than by their teacher’s words. Wang Qingsong casts a cynical gaze on a society that is so obsessed with better tomorrows that it has been unable to preserve its traditions. He asks himself with irony what an educational system would look like if it followed the famous slogan “education must start from the children”.

Nights Revels of Lao Li 老栗夜宴图 2000

Night Revels of Lao Li depicts the helplessness of Chinese intellectuals in a society undermined by corruption and consumerism. Updating a 10th century Chinese masterpiece : Night Revels of Han Xizai by Gu Hongzhong, it draws similarities between Han Xizai – a frustrated post-Tang dynasty official who, realizing his reforms would never come to fruition, turns to debauchery – and Li Xianting (Lao Li) – a leading figure of China’s current art scene. Art critics and artists replace the original revelers. Though there is a thousand year gap between the two stories, few things have changed. This ten-metre-long photograph was Wang’s first large scale work. It plays a seminal role in his life. Funded with an inheritance from his mother just after she passed away, it marks the beginning of his critical success.

Yaochi Fiesta 瑶池相会 2005

This is Wang’s depiction of the mythical garden Yaochi in which Xi Wangmu, literally the Queen Mother of the West, held great banquets. The goddess is traditionally seen as the dispenser of prosperity and longevity, but Wang renders the divine revelers in her plastic garden as morosely mortal.

Romantique 罗曼蒂克 2003

Romantique welcomes us into a deceptive paradise that stands between the Western conception of heaven and a bucolic Chinese garden. Though it seems perfect, the cardboard set is filled with fake fruits, and plastic flowers and trees. The figures in this picture parody scenes from Masaccio, Velázquez, Botticelli, Raphael and Matisse. Wang Qingsong continues his critique of the world’s absurdity by revealing the paradox between the ideology of our modern society, where everything has to be beautiful and perfect, and the cheap fake ugliness it actually produces: Paradise is made of plastic and works of art are ridiculous.

China Mansion 中国之家 2003

Shot in China’s biggest movie studio, the 12 meter-long, China Mansion questions the influence of Western values in the globalization of China. Mirroring how China has invited foreign experts to give support and guidance to the country, Wang Qingsong welcomes us into a magnificent house decorated with Western and Chinese furniture. The Western guests strike poses ridiculously imitating works by the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Ingres, Gauguin, Man Ray, and Klein. These guests are completely disconnected from the artificial environment. Everything seems fake and emptied of its meaning. As a consequence, the expected dialogue between cultures and centuries never happens.

Preincarnation 前世 2002

This triptych draws inspiration from the giant Buddhist statues one finds in sacred places throughout China. Their varnish has gone; all that remains is earth, which highlights their profound fragility. They are partly broken: one is supported on crutches, and the unstable balance of the other two seems very precarious. Their faces are worn and their bodies ungraceful. At their feet, Wang Qingsong stands armed with an axe and a saw, ready to resume their destruction. Preincarnation is the artist’s dramatic take on the erosion of traditional values in our contemporary world. Their loss only seems to lead us to the inescapable destruction of culture and civilization.

Incarnation 现世 2002

Incarnation expands the ideas put forth in Preincarnation. This time, the bright and luminous gold that is generally used for such sculptures has been replaced with an artificial golden varnish, symbolizing the consumerist greed that is a typical feature of the artist’s vocabulary. In this series, Wang Qingsong illustrates the change in Buddhist values from another angle. He is reacting to the practice people now have of going to temples to ask the gods for more affluence: a car, an apartment, money… These deities seem distressed: they do not understand the reverence that is paid to them. Buddhism, which was historically supposed to promote material detachment, is nowadays becoming the embodiment of the desire for wealth.

Past, Present and Future 过去现在和将来 2001

This triptych reproduces the iconic and monumental sculptures that symbolized triumphant socialism. They represent the Chinese people marching towards a better future. Each sculpture is finished a different material: earth represents the past, silver the present, and gold the future. In this work, Wang Qingsong addresses the issue of a people’s ideology throughout history. By modifying their appearance, he demonstrates that although the dogmatic veneer may change, the need that compels a people to believe in itself and express its faith in its destiny remains. These sculptures lose their Chinese cultural essence to become symbols of ideology itself. Nowadays, the belief in capitalism has become worldwide. It has replaced the faith one had under monarchy or socialism… Wang is denouncing the tendency each people has to idealize itself.

Offerings äž&#x203A;ĺ&#x201C; 2003

This picture shows us to what extent spirituality has left Buddhism, which now represents little more than the quest for wealth. From the floodwaters, devotees, arms filled with donations, reach towards the idol, which remains unmoved and seemingly refuses these gifts. Alongside traditional offerings, such as flowers and food, they present the deity with the branded commodities of our consumer society.

Fotofest 摄影节 2005

Fotofest depicts the media storm surrounding art. Posing as Matisse’s Dance, the models are surrounded by a horde of over 600 people. Each is carrying a Styrofoam camera, capturing without seeing what is going on before their very eyes. Wang criticizes the starification and over-mediatization of certain events where the spectacle has taken over the works’ meaning. He is showing us that the multiplication of sources of information only creates noise and confusion. Art’s beauty disappears and is replaced with vulgar trash.

Temporary Ward 临时病房 2008

This is the first piece realized abroad by Wang Qingsong, done while he was working on a theatre project in Newcastle. In it, he decides not to capture what is happening on stage, focusing instead on the stalls, where another, far more heartrending spectacle is taking place. He lets us see behind the scenes, showing us that which we are not supposed to see. He contrasts the ideal beauty of the representation with the all too real theatre of life: over 300 people in dramatic circumstances, a mass of wounded humans, portrayed in all their suffering and pain.

Hard Seat Compartment 硬座车厢 2008

Trains play a very important role in Chinese society. From the annual trip back home for the New Year, to the migrant’s journey in hope of creating a new life, the train materializes the social mobility experienced in China since the reforms. Wang Qingsong recalls these collective memories in this triptych. By progressively filling the train with its passengers, he decomposes the material, psychological and social functions of the train, hoping to capture the claustrophobia and chaos experienced by millions of ordinary people as they travel throughout the country in search of a better life.

国宴 2007

Illustrating the vacuity of international gatherings, UN brings us into a meeting of over 1300 people gathered around “u” and “n” shaped tables stuffing themselves with junk food while entertaining conversations about their dreams of a brighter future. The before/after structure of the diptych confronts us with what remains when it’s all over: leftovers and a scene of deep emptiness. All this was useless.

Follow Me 跟我学 2003

“China walks towards the World and the World learns about China” is the slogan illustrated by Follow Me, which is titled after a popular English-learning TV show from the 80s. Wang, the teacher, is pointing at an oversized blackboard. What is written there looks like the unsolvable equation of our globalized world. An over-abundance of information, formulas and logos written in different languages and drawn from different disciplines are mixed together in a state of total confusion. It is interesting to note that Wang’s most iconic piece was made in reaction to criticisms he had received for the hugeness of his work; he wanted to prove he was able to produce images on a low budget. As a result, he completed this work with a simple box of chalk.

Competition 大摆战场 2004

Wang Qingsong conceived this photograph in reaction to the commodification of urban spaces, where new brands and shopping malls appear daily and battle each other to occupy the public space. To illustrate this competition, he made handwritten notes, reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution’s propaganda posters, with over 3000 brand names and slogans. Stuck onto the walls of an oversized warehouse, they eat up the space, creating noise and confusion.

Dormitory ĺŽżč&#x2C6;? 2005

In this photograph, Wang Qingsong creates an impressive dormitory, where the beds are stacked up like skyscrapers, as a metaphor of urban life. Despite the gigantic size and human density of this dormitory, each individual lives a very compartmentalized existence and interaction between people is almost non-existent. The beds become symbols of our loneliness, as each person sits there naked, lost in their dreams.

Poisonous Spider ćŻ&#x2019;č&#x153;&#x2DC;č&#x203A;&#x203A; 2005

The predatory spider weaves a web to catch its prey. It attracts its victims thanks to the pheromones on these invisible threads. Once it has caught its prey, the spider injects venom into the defenseless animal before consuming it. For Wang Qingsong, the spider embodies both attraction and danger. Indeed numerous legends illustrate our fascination for the beauty and fineness of spider webs. In this work, consumerism becomes the spider web in which we are trapped and material goods are what lure us there. The artist thus shows us that our lust for pleasure is our own prison and that it leads us to an inescapable end.

Follow Him 王庆松 2010

Follow Him is the continuation of Follow Me. It took Wang over a year to collect these 17 tonnes of used books from different countries and disciplines and let dust gather on them before he could shoot the work. In it, Wang poses as a scholar whose dissertation is a mass of blank pages strewn around him. The work casts a critical and ironic gaze on the figure of the thinker or creator in this era of the universal library. Despite the mountain of books, the scholar struggles to find inspiration. In this way, Wang Qingsong denounces materialistic accumulation of knowledge. For him, knowledge is not the sum of what one has read but the fruit of an inner revelation. Through this picture, he urges us to think for ourselves.

MoMA Studio ç&#x201D;ťĺŽ¤ 2005

MoMA Studio is a cynical look at the commodification of art education. A male and a female model, surrounded by a crowd of apprentice painters and photographers, pose in a style that is commonly taught in art academies. Depicting a social phenomenon, the scene illustrates the explosive spread of education as a business. Students with low grades, unable to go to university, are given the opportunity to attend expensive art schools. Culture is thus sold to the highest bidder, and social inequality in education keeps growing.

Lu Xun 鲁迅 2004

Lu Xun was an early 20th century writer who, as one of China’s first Modern thinkers, helped introduce western ideas to China, all the while criticizing the erosion of Chinese identity. Wang Qingsong plays the writer in deep contemplation, facing a winter storm alone. This picture, a true manifesto of the artist’s thought, creates a troubling resonance between his own work and that of the writer. Combining parody with the absurd, and confounding expected codes, the spirit of Lu Xun seems ever-present in each of Wang Qingsong’s images.

Goddess 毒蜘蛛 2010

Made of clay in Wang Qingsong’s studio, Goddess was inspired by a trip the artist made to New York. Lady Liberty’s head is placed on Chairman Mao’s body. Wang Qingsong thus reveals his fascination for popular forms of representation by combining these icons of East and West. By placing them in an abandoned construction yard, he illustrates the decay of these ideologies. The Declaration of Independence lies on the ground. Once idolized, both icons are now forgotten. Collective aspirations vanish to the benefit of individual pleasures.

Home 家

2005

China’s modernization went hand in hand with the destruction of old houses to give space for more comfortable condominiums. Wang Qingsong enters a ruined house that is reminiscent of his – now destroyed – childhood home. He hopes to find lost treasures among the debris, yet realizes quickly that it is the real estate developers who will probably get the real treasure.

Dream of Migrants 盲流梦 2005

Dream of Migrants illustrates the plight of China’s migrant workers who move to boom cities far from their rural hometowns in search of a better future. Wang himself has moved several times in his life and migrants play a special role in his work. In a single frame, as in a Brueghel painting, Wang Qingsong captures the multiple aspects of these migrants’ everyday lives, telling us dozens of little stories around this house that awaits demolition. Rather than creating a portrait of miserable wretchedness, he shows us the force of human life, which in all circumstances, always triumphs despite its precariousness.

The Glory of Hope 希望之光 2007

In 2008, China hosted the Olympic Games. The Glory of Hope confronts the euphoria felt by the Chinese on winning the right to host this event and their anxiety about the country’s uncertain future. In this troubling and dramatic work, Wang invited four members of his family to stand in a muddy field that recalls China’s agricultural roots. With the puddle rings behind them, staring into the setting sun, we are left to wonder what the horizon holds.

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Tramp 流浪汉 2004

A portrait of those left behind in the economic boom, Tramp is a dramatic work that illustrates the downfall of those who place too much faith in consumerism. For Wang Qingsong, all our dreams of riches can only lead to abandonment and rejection. The woman gives us a wry look, while the man’s cadaverous body stares imploringly towards the sky. The many redundant objects of everyday life such as coins, a fluffy lap dog and branded waste surround them. Wang Qingsong’s pessimistic vision tells us that after the euphoria, all that is left is disillusionment and disenchantment.

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Night Patrol ĺ¤&#x153;ĺˇĄ 2005

This work illustrates the alienation of the body by society. In the middle of the night, naked and powerless women are being arrested by the police. Huddled up and humiliated, they clutch their meager belongings, showing us their fragility and the loss of their freedom when faced with a society that controls them.

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Temple ĺŻşĺş&#x2122; 2012

In a gigantic temple, over a hundred mud-covered weak and naked bodies are prostrated in front of an enormous gold and smiling Buddha, which represents power and wealth. Wang Qingsong denounces the blindness and veneration people have for material success.

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Archeologist 考古 2004

Archaeologist was shot inside a 3 meter by 8 meter pit-like cave where thirty nude models were covered with mud to resemble corpses. Death is also evoked in a sign, which reads “Pit Four” – in Chinese, “four” sounds like “death”. The pit also violently reminds us of the mass graves of recent history and symbolizes the decadence and exploitation of the body in contemporary society. Wang is calling for a re-examination of our history and, as the archaeologist, searches for clues as to what has caused this nameless heap.

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Another Battle 又一次战争系 2001

Another Battle mimics film stills from the patriotic and heroic movies Wang used to watch as a child when he wanted to become a soldier. He appears as a powerless commander, witnessing the new war of economic development where ancient Chinese traditions are fighting against modern Western values, and countries and brands are competing for profit and economic power. Wang places the combatants in surreal situations, illustrating the absurd contradictions of this struggle. Littered with branded refuse, soldiers take aim at butterflies made from cell phones. Cans of Coke litter the ground. There appears to be no winner at all in this battle, for how can one defeat an invisible enemy?

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The History of Monuments 历史丰碑 2010

This gigantic, 42 meter-wide picture is Wang Qingsong’s most monumental work. In it, dozens of real people strike classical poses encased in mud, reminiscent of the friezes commissioned by Roman emperors. Wang Qingsong creates a mix of symbols from different historical periods and civilizations: ancient Greece neighbours Buddhist statues, the Renaissance meets Confucius… Conceived with the sole aim of being the longest photograph in the world, this work makes fun of itself in order to ironically denounce the predominance of quantity and spectacle over the sense and understanding of history.

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Peonies 牡丹 2003

Rendered from vegetables and slices of raw mutton and beef, Wang’s deceptive peonies emphasize the erosion of traditions. Very present in Chinese art, peonies symbolizes national brillance and the prosperity of the country. His flowers, both fresh and frozen, chart the transition from the grandeur of the past to the vulgar decay of the present.

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This book is published by

Thircuir Limited. Editor

Enoïa Ballade Essay

Jérémie Thircuir Translation

Thomas Bartz Special Thanks

Elisabeth Corso Thomas Bartz