Upcoming Exhibition | Wang Youshen: Codes of Culture

Wang Youshen: Codes of Culture

Curator: Carol Yinghua Lu

Exhibition Dates: Mar 26 – Jun 26, 2022

Address: Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum

No.50, Xingshikou Road, Haidian District, Beijing

Foreword

Our Words – The Student Photography Association of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Selected Works

Original Newspaper, 1987, Newspaper, 39×27cm

Wang Youshen’s art has evolved alongside the historical process of contemporary art in China since the second half of the 1980s, while developing a distinctive presence of its own. At the beginning of his artistic career, he witnessed the widespread discussion of Pop aesthetics and semiotic theory in the Chinese art world. Catching the tail of such a discussion, Wang Youshen worked with methods of collages and repetition to create a series of head portraits that appeared akin to a series of identical signs.

Portrait Series, 1990, Mixed Media on Board, 806×34cm

Newspaper·Curtain, 1991, Silkscreen, Cotton Cloth, Dimensions Variable

Mass media, popular culture, and print culture were among the cultural issues that received considerable attention in the 1990s. Through marketization, mass media were given a greater degree of freedom and occupied a significant place in the space of social discourse. Under the spotlight of the media, many social phenomena were reported and discussed, and in turn, acquired cultural significance. Wang’s post at the Beijing Youth Daily gave him a practical platform with leeway for proactive actions. Not only did he bring coverage of contemporary art and conceptual art practices into the pages of the paper, hence giving them greater visibility. He also continuously engaged with the media industry’s relation to the landscape of social life in his artworks. While being the platform for his presswork and creative practice, Beijing Youth Daily provided first-hand sources for his artworks as an example of the media industry. This has cultivated a relationship between his works and the urban life and popular culture since the 1990s that is closer than “close proximity (Jinjuli).”

Newspaper·Advertising, 1993，Silkscreen, Cotton Cloth, Dimensions Variable

As a direct participant of the media industry phenomenon himself, Wang Youshen has problematized and visualized the mechanism of the propagation of news and images from the perspective of cultural studies. His practice tackles current issues and social phenomena such as the pertinent debate of the rise of mass media in social life, and how it shaped the ideology of the public. He also used the methodology of cultural studies to visually encode the problematics, which implied his self-awareness of his participation in such a historical progress.

Newspaper·Reading, 1993, Performance

Being at the forefront of the society and in the backstage of media production, Wang has had an unquenchable urge to both create and dissolve images. This was also reflected in his works. In his practice, he constantly alternates his positions between that of the image producer, the image consumer, the image skeptic, and someone who deconstructs images. Such conflicting yet co-existing viewpoints have generated an important tension in his works.

Nutritious Soil, 1994, Potting Soil, Dimensions Variable

During the 1980s, artworks were presented in name of artist groups, accompanied by manifestos. Individual voices, however, returned to the stage from 1987 onwards. The shift towards individual expressions and subjects more immediate to individuals found its way into Wang Youshen’s series of works that gazed at friends and family. Since then, the artist has continued to develop different forms of expressions for his personal memories and states of mind throughout various stages of his life.

Shining·Military Clubhouse, 1997, Slides, Colored lights, Menu, Tables, Chairs, Dimensions Variable

In the late 1980s, a conceptual dimension began to emerge in artistic practice in China. In response, some artists adopted an essentialist view of art, emphasizing artistic and formal languages, as a way to reject constraints set on art by state ideologies. Some artists simply understood “concept” as coming up with ideas or resistance to establishments, which even led to nihilistic life mottos. Early in the formation of the conceptual vein, Wang Youshen had participated in founding a conceptually accentuated photography group. Although Wang also adopted conceptually oriented methods, he turned towards concrete life experience, specific historical time and space. As a result, a dynamic and deep humanistic concern has taken roots in his works.

Darkroom, 2004, Darkroom Equipment, Negatives, Photo Paper, Developing Trays, Water, Red Lamp, Thread, Clip, Document, Dimensions Variable

The humanistic discussions among Chinese intellectuals in the early 1990s are echoed in his works. Some of his works reflected his perception and somberness towards the passing of life and memory or a despondence towards a determined future. These deep reflections on individual life have constituted the intellectual core of his art.

Washing·Time Difference, 2006-2008, Photograph, Water, Fiberglass, 120×90cm×18pieces

Since the 1990s, Wang’s artistic career has had many cross-overs with the globalization of Chinese art. He has exhibited multiple times in Western Europe, North America, and South America. The exhibitions were mostly group and thematic shows about China. Nonetheless, due to his inclination towards specific issues and personal experience, his works have distinguished themselves from those artworks by Chinese artists of this period featuring solidified superficial icons, repeatedly interpreted by cold-war ideologies in the early 1990s. Subsequently, his works could not be as easily consumed by the art market and mass media. Historically intertwined yet undogmatic, the art practice of Wang Youshen should be of particular interest to serious art historians and institutions in their efforts to write and understand contemporary Chinese art history.

Per Square Meter, 2010-2014, Drywall, Plywood, Glue, 100×100×4cm×21pieces

Since the organization of the exhibition “Discordant Harmony” in 2017, the Inside-Out Art Museum has launched a research on the 1990s through studies of specific regions and artists. This exhibition on Wang Youshen is part of such a historical research and is curated by Carol Yinghua Lu, art historian and director of the museum. As studies of individual cases can lead to the formation of laws, thoughtful individual case studies will assist us in loosening, or even subverting existing historical impressions and narratives. We can then perhaps develop a more truthful and nuanced understanding and narration of our own via the vein of contemporary culture and thinking in China.

Star City·Filter, 2015, Scan, Photograph, 300×150cm

Artist

Wang Youshen

Wang Youshen (b.1964, Beijing), currently works and lives in Beijing. Wang graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, and the Middle School Attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1984. He worked for Beijing Youth Daily from 1988 to 2018.

Wang Yousheng has participated in domestically and internationally influential biennials and institutional exhibitions, as well as exhibitions that held important  positions in the history of Chinese contemporary art, such as “China / Avant Garde Exhibition”, “New Generation Art Exhibition”, La Biennale di Venezia, Bienal de São Paulo, Taipei Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial, Shanghai Biennial, etc. He is one of the important participants and witnesses of Chinese contemporary art.

At the same time, Wang Youshen has worked in Beijing Youth Daily for 30 years from 1988 to 2018 and served as art editor, art director and other positions. All along, Wang Youshen has dual identities, working between the art world and the media world. He committed to investigating and loosening the rigescent boundaries between art/life, art practice/daily life.

Wang Youshen has his unique way of understanding and intervening in the duality of official/civilian, professional/amateur, art/reality, etc., which allows him to use the resources of two different systems to generate the possibilities of knowing himself and the surroundings. Wang Youshen presents us with the intensity, continuity and richness of an artist’s practice. His practice is not only reflected at the level of artworks, but is constantly re-examining one’s potential and limitations, and exploring possible forms of dialogues between art and the self, art and the world.

Curator

Carol Yinghua Lu

Carol Yinghua Lu is an art historian and curator. She is the director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne in 2020. From 2012 to 2015, she was the artistic director and chief curator of OCAT Shenzhen. She was the co-artistic director of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale and co-curator of the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale in 2012. She was the first visiting fellow in the Asia-Pacific Fellowship program at the Tate Research Centre in 2013 and was one of the first four ARIAH (Association of Research Institute in Art History) East Asia Fellows in 2017. Since 2013, Carol Yinghua Lu has been in collaboration with artist Liu Ding in the research on the legacy of socialist realism in the practices and discourses of contemporary art in China, entitled “From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: Echoes of Socialist Realism.”

Carol Yinghua Lu has served as a jury member for several important awards in the global art world, including the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, the Future Generation Art Award at the Pinchuk Art Center in Kyiv in 2012, the Philippine National Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Hugo Boss Asian Emerging Artist Award and Rolex Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2019, the Discovery Award at the 2020 Jimei-Arles International Photo Art Season and the Hyundai Blue Prize Youth Curatorial Award in 2021. She has been on the jury for the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award since 2019.