Wang Qingsong
Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong creates elaborately staged photographic tableaux that comment on the rapidly changing social, cultural, and economic conditions of contemporary China. Originally trained as a painter, the artist began his career as part of the “Gaudy Art” movement of the 1990s, a form of Chinese Pop that brashly satirized the nation’s newfound consumerist culture. In the late 1990s, Wang turned to photography, employing dozens of models and large-scale stage sets to create cinematic images that address the extreme transformations that have taken place since the Cultural Revolution, often incorporating references to traditional Chinese art as well as to Western masters such as Courbet and Ingres. Considering themes of Westernization, urban transformation, and social inequality, Wang’s photographs offer a mordant view of the contradictions inherent in a globalized China.
Wang’s work has been exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including solo shows at the International Center of Photography in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. His work was featured at the Chinese Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale and has been included in major surveys of Chinese contemporary art at venues such as the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Getty Museum, the Museum of the Central Academy …
Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong creates elaborately staged photographic tableaux that comment on the rapidly changing social, cultural, and economic conditions of contemporary China. Originally trained as a painter, the artist began his career as part of the “Gaudy Art” movement of the 1990s, a form of Chinese Pop that brashly satirized the nation’s newfound consumerist culture. In the late 1990s, Wang turned to photography, employing dozens of models and large-scale stage sets to create cinematic images that address the extreme transformations that have taken place since the Cultural Revolution, often incorporating references to traditional Chinese art as well as to Western masters such as Courbet and Ingres. Considering themes of Westernization, urban transformation, and social inequality, Wang’s photographs offer a mordant view of the contradictions inherent in a globalized China.
Wang’s work has been exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including solo shows at the International Center of Photography in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. His work was featured at the Chinese Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale and has been included in major surveys of Chinese contemporary art at venues such as the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Getty Museum, the Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Asia Society, New York, NY
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY
National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, Brussels, and Beijing