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Sweden-based Chinese artist paints dreams, reality
By Xu Wenwen |
May 15, 2013, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE cold, snow, forests and emptiness of northern Europe inspired Chinese Swedish artist Wang Tong to create works that combine the real and the surreal in symbolic oil paintings.
Grays and whites - like vast, austere stretches of snowy landscape - predominate, with bright greens and orange in flashes of color.
"My loneliness in northern Europe was extreme, influencing my art in an inexplicable way," Want said at the opening of his solo exhibition in Hangzhou on Sunday.
Titled "Words on the Left, Pictures on the Right," the exhibition is underway at Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery through June 3.
Born in 1962 in Dalian, Liaoning Province, Wang studied both traditional Chinese painting and Western painting. He settled in Sweden in 1988, and became chairman of the Swedish International Artists' Association. He has taught as a visiting scholar in several art colleges in Europe and China.
Wang's works on exhibition combine both realistic figures and surrealistic elements. Many visitors pause and reflect.
"My paintings combine reality, illusion and my dreams," says Wang.
Many ordinary things are depicted, such as a girl sitting at a desk, two women watching a screen and a party of men and women.
"An artist should be able to find the meaning of common things and sublimate it through artistic language," he says.
The work "New Life" is a wall-sized work showing a computer games' interface. In the middle, watching the screen, a gray, dispirited man and woman face a multitude of choices: fashions, daily commodities and so on.
"Modern people face too much information," says Wang. "People need to know that in our lives many things do not deserve attention."
He frequently paints women, faces or bodies, Oriental or Occidental.
Two circular paintings in medieval style depict women whose hair and dress are realistic but whose faces are scenery, not human features.
Time is a theme. In "Beauty," bright green leaves cover a Chinese woman wearing cheongsam, but one of the leaves is turning orange, a sign of autumn and approaching winter. In "Package of Festival," a gray-colored woman faces a mirror and combs her hair; the reflected woman in the mirror is orange in color and wears a head scarf.
"Words on the Left, Pictures on the Right" Exhibition
Date: Through June 3, 10am-5pm
Venue: Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery, 52-2 Yan'an Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8782-5633
Admission: Free
Grays and whites - like vast, austere stretches of snowy landscape - predominate, with bright greens and orange in flashes of color.
"My loneliness in northern Europe was extreme, influencing my art in an inexplicable way," Want said at the opening of his solo exhibition in Hangzhou on Sunday.
Titled "Words on the Left, Pictures on the Right," the exhibition is underway at Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery through June 3.
Born in 1962 in Dalian, Liaoning Province, Wang studied both traditional Chinese painting and Western painting. He settled in Sweden in 1988, and became chairman of the Swedish International Artists' Association. He has taught as a visiting scholar in several art colleges in Europe and China.
Wang's works on exhibition combine both realistic figures and surrealistic elements. Many visitors pause and reflect.
"My paintings combine reality, illusion and my dreams," says Wang.
Many ordinary things are depicted, such as a girl sitting at a desk, two women watching a screen and a party of men and women.
"An artist should be able to find the meaning of common things and sublimate it through artistic language," he says.
The work "New Life" is a wall-sized work showing a computer games' interface. In the middle, watching the screen, a gray, dispirited man and woman face a multitude of choices: fashions, daily commodities and so on.
"Modern people face too much information," says Wang. "People need to know that in our lives many things do not deserve attention."
He frequently paints women, faces or bodies, Oriental or Occidental.
Two circular paintings in medieval style depict women whose hair and dress are realistic but whose faces are scenery, not human features.
Time is a theme. In "Beauty," bright green leaves cover a Chinese woman wearing cheongsam, but one of the leaves is turning orange, a sign of autumn and approaching winter. In "Package of Festival," a gray-colored woman faces a mirror and combs her hair; the reflected woman in the mirror is orange in color and wears a head scarf.
"Words on the Left, Pictures on the Right" Exhibition
Date: Through June 3, 10am-5pm
Venue: Sanshang Contemporary Art Gallery, 52-2 Yan'an Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8782-5633
Admission: Free
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