Wang Xiaosong


Wang Xiaosong is a Chinese artist and professor. Having studied in Beijing and Berlin from 1983 to 1997, Wang uses a confluence of Chinese and Western art in his works.

Early life and education

Wang was born in Wuhan, Hubei in 1964. After the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, his father was involved, while Wang returned to his hometown in Dalian, Liaoning in 1969.
Since childhood, Wang was fond of creating clay figures. His grandfather and grandmother were a craftsman and a housewife, respectively. His mother was a singer in Wuhan. One of his uncles played the piano, another played the flute, and his aunt was a dancer. Wang noted in an interview that his "living environment was full of the arts".
Wang began to learn drawing and calligraphy as a teenager. He attended Wuhan Experimental School, where he "practiced sketching and colors". In 1983, he began his studies at the Central Academy of Arts & Design in Beijing—now known as the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University. Under the supervision of professors Liu Jude and Yu Binnan, Wang majored in Book Decoration, graduating in 1987.

Career

In 1990, Wang moved to Berlin, where he majored in Visual Communication at the Berlin University of the Arts with professors Spohn and Bernhard Boës. In 1992, he settled in Berlin, working as a freelance artist and designer. In 1994, Wang was accepted as a member of the German Artists Society.
In 1996, he became a Director and Cultural General Supervisor at the Germany-China Cultural Exchanges Association. From 1997 to 2003, he taught at Victor Gollancz Volkshochschule Steglitz in Berlin. In 2003, he moved back to China and has since served as a doctoral advisor, professor, and dean of the Visual Communication Design Department in the Academy of Fine Arts at Zhejiang University.
In addition to his activities as an artist and lecturer, Wang, in cooperation with Berlin architect Peter Ruge, maintains an architectural office in Hangzhou, where numerous new buildings and urban designs are conceived, organized, and realized. In 2011, Wang's work, Making Life, was shown at the Venice Biennale. Making Life was conceived as an antithesis to the official Chinese pavilion, and attracted media attention. Wang's works are part of various notable collections, such as the National Art Museum of China, the Ludwig Museum Koblenz, and the Wiener Künstlerhaus. Wang is represented in Europe exclusively by the Schütz Fine Art gallery in Vienna.

Work

Style

Wang is an abstractionist. His style has been described as "breaking the boundary between painting and sculpture".

Themes

Wang's early work occupies an ambivalent middle ground between the abstract and the figurative. In some of his works, such as Offenes China, cuts similar to those used by Lucio Fontana break the unity of the canvas, giving it a three-dimensional dynamic.
The concepts of generation and decease are central in Wang's oeuvre, which becomes political when it addresses overpopulation, mass control, and uniformity.
In Wang's later works, such as Ohne Titel , these themes remain at the center of his oeuvre. However, for the artist, there is no more need to rely on representative symbols of birth and annihilation, such as cuts and people.

Selected exhibitions