The upcoming exhibition Wang Yiqiong : I want to tell you she’s my girlfriend by Chinese artist Wang Yiqiong is the second showcase of the artist’s works at Contemporary by Angela Li gallery. The show opens on 5 Feb, well in time for Valentine’s Day. It revolves around Wang’s Chinese Lovers and Escaped Flower series of woodcut prints.
Wang graduated from the printmaking department of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts.Described as a “fanatic and possessed” youth by Chinese art critic Mr Liu Xiaochun in his book Deconstruction and Reconstruction –A Discussion On Chinese Contemporary Art,Wang’s obsession with art was well known during his five years of studies in art school; and his works were famous for their experimental qualities.
Here is an exhibition full of symbolism, with Wang’s use of women and flowers as feminine metaphorical imagery. Wang’s use of vivid colours injects a sense of tension between desire and constraint. As Wang himself notes, “the relationship of Chinese lovers is secretive and furtive, but also equivocal... it is quite entangled”. All these contradictions and entanglements give us insight into Wang’s “psychological process of unexplainable excitement and its suppression”, as the famous Chinese art critic Li Xianting, who curated his last exhibition, says.
More than 30different woodcut monoprints will be on show, including monoprints of the late Princess Diana. Monoprints are unique prints –best know examples of these are Andy Warhol’s serigraphs of famous figures.