Wang
Aiying
Painting for Wang Ai Ying is an adventure in which intuition is
her guidance. She employs her paint in a manner that is untamed
and unpredictable - each line finding its own path. The array of
dazzling colours is layered and intertwined creating faces and
objects that appear wild and distorted. There is something rather
grotesque, even monstrous, about the figures in her paintings.
Wang portrays close-ups of her subjects, often with only part of
the face and body fitting onto the canvas, making her work all
the more intense and concentrated. And as if she wishes to gets
to the core of the human, to reach beyond what is obvious, Wang
appears not to paint the surface skin of the body/face but rather
the flesh behind it with its bloody colours and raw textures. The
result is at once beautiful, disturbing and powerful.
Wang believes that the art she produces should
capture a contemporary feel, and secondly, that rebelling against
knowledge, reason and
rational thought allows the artist to achieve the most genuine
and blissful state of creativity. So while many artists avoid veering
towards what is arbitrary and random, the essence of Wang’s
style is inspired by this notion. Wang does not even know what
the end result of her work will turn out to look like when she
starts, she just follows her feelings to create the lines, and
the paintings are born, almost out of entropy.
On meeting Wang Ai Ying, one would never imagine
that such a sweet, gentle woman would produce such twisted characters.
The artist
explains: “My works focus on the environment in China today.
Because of the rapid expansion of cities, countless workers from
the countryside pile into the urban areas, creating overcrowded
and unregulated conditions. Seeing this non-beautiful visual effect,
I traitorously use unconventional material to express the special
dynamic on the workers’ faces. Vivid colors squeezed into
each other and interknit with the figurative shapes, anatomizing
the red nerves and intense muscles. They are twisted and ugly.”
Wang’s work is courageous and bold, crying out for attention
and demanding judgment. Wang’s creativity is not affected
by what people make of her work, and she thrives on the risks she
takes. The artist has even used unconventional media in her work – one
time she used spoiled soy sauce and paint! Undoubtedly, Wang’s
paintings are an acquired taste but what no one can deny is the
passion that oozes from each painting and the conviction this artist
has in her own creative spirit.
Wang Ai Ying was selected as one of the top 20
emerging artists in China in the 2005 Dragonair Emerging Chinese
Artist Awards.
Jury members of the important panel for the art award included
Gerard Goodrow, Director of Art Cologne, and Jeff Kelley, Curator
of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Wang was awarded the “People’s
Choice Award” at the event.
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