Manchester, Chinese Arts Center, Representing the People, 1998-1999
Literature
S. Champion and K. Smith, Representing the People, Manchester, 1998-1999, p. 129 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Wang Jinsong belongs to the representatives of a new kind of realism who have come to the fore since 1989 in Beijing. But his type of realism is strange and unreal: figures of different origins meet in open and indeterminate rooms, faceless stereotyped figures and dolls interchange with realistic colored faces which also seem impersonal. Their individuality seems “lent” and they seem to function under the orders of an anonymous director. “I love the theatre,” said Wang Jinsong. “On the stage people do what they are told.” He finds his chracters on walks through the city streets, on advertising boardings, in window displays, in the artificial world of the media and in the clichés of traditional culture. The artist too is part of this world and can only find through the deliberately taken stance of the outside something approaching an individual style.
J. Noth, China Avant-Garde: Counter-Currents in Art and Culture, Oxford, 1994, p. 157