Victor Wang

Purple Sky - Female Figure with Auburn Hair, Highly Textural Oil Painting

2013

Victor Wang's highly textured paintings involve thick layers of paint over collaged images from the Tang Dynasty. In "Let Her Go", the foreground shows a modern female figure sitting upon the side of a boat which gives the impression she is wearing wings and about to take flight. Upon closer look, there are various scenes taking place around her in the water - warriors with knives drawn, a jeep in pursuit of some unseen enemy, a cauldron boiling over. Influence by the Renaissance Masters, Titian and Rembrandt for their glazing and layering techniques respectively, the artist builds the surface using heavy paint, swirling and mixing the color on the canvas. The end result is a poetic and emotionally powerful representation of the human form. Victor Wang Let Her Go oil on canvas 48h x 60w in 121.92h x 152.40w cm VWG011 My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences - worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure - which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences. I grew up amongst the sunflower fields in northern China. In my childhood years, I played under the bright, yellow sunflowers with my brothers everyday. China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage. My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China. Although I often gain great pleasure from the process of painting, it is most important to unfold expressively those feelings within myself. Wang belongs to a generation of immigrant painters from China, whose artistic background was defined by socialist realism but took advantage of their skills and broke away from that tradition to create new subjects in the U.S. “When I was a student during Cultural Revolution, Soviet realism art was among the dominant source of influence and it grabbed us like lightening...

Ben Duke Cake oil on canvas 36h x 38w in 91.44h x 96.52w cm BSD036 Ben Duke b. 1977 Louisville, KY Education 2006 M.F.A., Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD 2002 B....

Story Short-story Once upon a time, five women met up at an outdoor café. They sat around the table sipping their coffee and chatting, one caught everyone's attention, because she was dressed up in a metallic suit, complete with robotic wings, resembling a robot bee. The others were impressed by her outfit and asked her about it. She explained that she was a performance artist and was on her way to a show. Another woman pulled out a cigarette and started smoking, ignoring the "no smoking" sign. The others frowned at her, but she just shrugged and continued puffing away. The third woman had a dead bird. She explained that she had found it on her way to the café and had brought it along to see if anyone could identify the species. Just as they were about to order their food, a swarm of bees suddenly descended on the café, buzzing around the tables and chairs. The women panicked, swatting at the bees and ducking for cover wondering why they had worn so many flowers. But then something surprising happened. The woman dressed as a robot bee stood up and raised her arms, and the bees suddenly started swarming around her, as if she were their queen. She calmly led the bees away from the café, and soon they disappeared into the distance. The other women were amazed, and the smoker even stubbed out her cigarette in awe. They all thanked the robot bee woman and chatted excitedly about what had just happened. The time traveler was fascinated by the scene in front of her and watched the women with interest. She noticed the woman with the dead bird and wondered how she had come to possess it. As she continued to observe, she realized that the woman had found the bird on a time-traveling expedition and had accidentally brought it back to the present. As the time traveler watched...

One of the key lessons we can glean from the myth of Sisyphus is the importance of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity. Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of ceas...

Ben Duke Hysterical Kats oil on canvas 28h x 27w in 71.12h x 68.58w cm BSD037 Ben Duke b. 1977 Louisville, KY Education 2006 M.F.A., Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore,...

Ben Duke One Such Morning oil on canvas 40h x 48w in 101.60h x 121.92w cm BSD034 Ben Duke b. 1977 Louisville, KY Education 2006 M.F.A., Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimo...

In this collection, British painter Michael Pemberton (b. 1974) suggests we each have a personal HUMAN ATMOSPHERE. An ether where we truly exist, unseen by the naked eye but as real ...

In this collection, British painter Michael Pemberton (b. 1974) suggests we each have a personal HUMAN ATMOSPHERE. An ether where we truly exist, unseen by the naked eye but as real ...

In this collection, British painter Michael Pemberton (b. 1974) suggests we each have a personal HUMAN ATMOSPHERE. An ether where we truly exist, unseen by the naked eye but as real ...

Michael Pemberton (b. 1974, England) is an emotive abstract painter, focussing on the energy and form of the human subject. Michael was educated at Chelsea School of Fine Art in London and later studied at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and The Ruskin School of Art, University of...

In this collection, British painter Michael Pemberton (b. 1974) suggests we each have a personal HUMAN ATMOSPHERE. An ether where we truly exist, unseen by the naked eye but as real ...

Artist: Da Hong Born in 1984 Henan China, and currently living in Beijing He graduated from Jingdezhen Ceramic University in 2007 The artist enjoyed piling up the blocks on the c...