Wang Yi presents his solo project "Graphics Hunter" at THE DELTA INST GODOWN
Graphics Hunter
Wang Yi
2023.05.27 – 2023.07.02
THE DELTA INST GODOWN
“Graphics Hunter, ” the exhibition seeks to shed light on Wang Yi’s artistic attitude and working methods. The hunter’s gaze wanders through the jungle—a symbolic jungle of the image age. In this era, human visual perception has been decoded and transformed into mechanical and digital imaging technologies. Since then, symbols have made a wild escape from the inertia of representation, carrying their forms and meanings as they dodge and strike within the jungle of images. Within this jungle, Wang Yi, though a hunter himself, remains wary of the siren song of graphic symbols. He carefully tracks their traces, using the embodied techniques of painting to depict an “inhuman” landscape of information theory.
Transcription-Perseus with the Head of Medusa
2023
Acrylic on canvas
180 × 150 cm
From the perspective of formal analysis in art history, Wang Yi’s painting language can be classified as a form of “Hard-edge Painting.” This is not an arbitrary appropriation of art history on the artist’s part, but rather stems from his own educational background and artistic experience. Through extensive viewing and study of canonical images, the artist has arrived at the following observation: “In classical art, exemplified by the Renaissance, the treatment of form and space can be summarized as ‘solidity on the outside, emptiness within.’” Thus, in Wang Yi’s paintings, “hard edge” is not merely a formal language, but an expression of a classical aesthetic aspiration within the image age.
Transcription-The zaporozhian cossacks writing a mocking letter to the turkish sultan
2023
Acrylic on canvas
200 × 160 cm
At the same time, the artist feels an affinity with the liberatory and spiritual dimensions of avant-garde painting, particularly that represented by Kazimir Malevich. Wang Yi believes that the reconstruction undertaken by avant-garde art embodies an aspiration, similar to that of classicism, toward the “objectification of the human.” Modernity, by contrast, has progressively stripped away the “human” layer by layer. Wang Yi’s references to Malevich’s Suprematism therefore serve to articulate his critical reflections on humanity and the concealed “gaze” embedded in art. Two universal artistic values—the universal humanism of classical art since the Renaissance and the progressive universalism of avant-garde art in its effort to reorganize the world—are placed within the artist’s scope of vision, as he traces their unconscious trajectories of movement.
Graphics Hunter Installation View
Graphics Hunter Installation View
Graphics Hunter Installation View
