M. Chiu, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China, Milan, 2007, p. 22 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
After 1985, Wang Guangyi created about twenty works in the “Frozen Northern Wastelands” series. From this series of works emerged abstract figures of upright backs of human images standing at attention (at first there were some finer details, such as the hairline parts, and afterward the images grew simpler), rounded shapes vaguely alike clouds, wide open terrain, the faraway pole, tranquil and forlorn atmosphere—all this constitutes the key features of the “Wastelands” series. In these works, the creator vehemently rejects the raison d’etre from human life experience, rejecting the wisdom and spontaneoity within feeling and emotion. Through abstraction’s form and spirit he expresses the main theme of a brand of lofty, serious principles. The artist says his works’ “express a lofty ideal and beauty, it includes the love of human essence’s conformity with eternity and health. In these works the creator and created experience a calm and weightiness, as well as beyond a happiness beyond meaning. M. Gao, Contemporary Chinese Art Volumes: Analysis of Oil Painting 1979-1999, Hubei, 1999, p. 20