In the nineties the rise of Chinese avant-garde art not only made inroads in the west in Europe and Australia with exhibitions like 'Another Long March' and 'Mao Goes Pop'. In the USA especially these Chinese artists had an even better reception, reaching its highpoint with the exhibition 'Inside Out' in 1998, organized by the Asia Society and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wang Gong Xin, like many other talented Chinese artists in New York in those years, was a part of this success. His first video installation, 'The Sky of Brooklyn' (1995), subtitled 'Digging a Hole in Beijing', was the start of his investigation into how new media can give added value to a work of art that relates to old values. In 1996 he made the video installation 'Baby Talk', in which images of parents and grandparents are projected onto the bottom of a child's playpen covered in milk. In the video installation 'Shepard' (1998) a sheep walks on straw in front of the screen, while on the video projection the artist follows the sheep for the ritual slaughter. His installation 'The Face' was made with the aid of computer morphing, a technique which unfortunately was often used in a weak manner in media art in the second half of the nineties. A 250 by 300 centimetre wooden frame hangs in the installation like in a stately portrait gallery. The realistic portrait, which audibly breathes deeply, switches from a laugh to a burst of laughter. After first looking serious again the face starts changing with each inhalation and exhalation from realistic to a negative blue screen as though dying is tangibly present with each breath. Once again, at the end of this running tape, there is laughter before the face transforms into a bleak, breathing sea. A clear concept with deep human compassion, as is also expressed in the images of his latest, yet unfinished production, the installation 'Cleanness'.
– Johan Pijnappel |
Wang Gong Xin, 1960, Beijing (China)
Lives and works in Beijing (China)
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