“LITTLE WOMAN” in BEIJING
Off-site
Wang Keping
Wang KEPING's sculpture "Little Woman" is on display at the 798 Gallery in Beijing. If you're ever in Beijing, go see it!
Wang KEPING’s sculpture “Little Woman” is on display at the 798 Gallery in Beijing. If you’re ever in Beijing, go see it!
Little Woman
Patterned hammered brass, 1999-2011
Gallery LOFT Edition, Height: 300 cm
Wang Keping is one of the most prominent members of the Xin Xin group, the Stars. This group, which began to gain attention in 1978, was politically engaged and represents one of the earliest expressions of the avant-garde in China. In addition to his wood sculpture work, Wang Keping wrote, notably, a play about the conditions of detention for political dissidents, which sparked considerable controversy in the press in Taiwan and China.
Exhibited early on by the Hanart Gallery in Taiwan and the Tokyo Gallery in Tokyo, he was one among the rising stars who achieved the most rapid success with collectors and the favor of the press.
His sculpture “Silence”, first in wood and then in bronze, is an icon of the early Chinese avant-garde, reproduced countless times.
Wang Keping played a decisive role in the Post-89 exhibition held in Hong Kong in 1993. He introduced Li Xianting to Johnson Chang and is believed to have selected the artists with Li Xianting.
Married to a French woman living in Beijing, he enjoyed relative immunity, but, threatened, Keping chose to emigrate to France in 1984. In Paris, he became close to Gao Xinjian, the future Nobel laureate in Literature.
His work in wood sculptures, blackened by fire, initially revolved around totems and idols reminiscent of the folkloric guardian figures of northern China and Korea, imbued with primitivism. He then moved towards simple forms with clean lines and a limited range of themes: women with chignons, kissing couples, birds, male figures with tails, and pairs of breasts. The simplification and progressive refinement of some sculptures verge on abstraction, and in the best examples, evoke the work of Constantin Brancusi, an artist who greatly influenced him.
At the request of the Ministry of Culture (as was the case with several sculptors at the time), Wang Keping created a large wooden portrait of François Mitterand.
He was one of the artists invited to the “Fields of Sculpture” exhibition on the Champs-Elysées in 1999, with a group of monumental totems.
To learn more about the artists, click here!
