Wang Zhibo is a highly regarded female Chinese painter who rose to prominence after being awarded the prestigious national Luo Zhongli Scholarship in 2008. A graduate of the prestigious China Academy of Art, Wang creates meticulous oil paintings that question our notions about time and space, and skilfully walk the line between the realistic and illusory.
Garden, like each of Wang’s enigmatic works, is a paradox: the setting hints at human presence, yet upon closer inspection reveals itself to be crucially devoid of humanity or expression. This ambiguity lends each painting an aura of displacement that transmutes into an eerie and engaging force over repeated viewings. Her settings combine natural elements such as running water, a flowering tree or rock, with man-made constructions such as a cement path or stone fountain. But without an anchoring human presence, the scene instead becomes a puzzle: a space that is potentially abandoned, imagined, transplanted or ready to be discovered.
Selected solo exhibitions for Wang include ‘He No Longer Looks Human’, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Shanghai (2018); ‘There is a place with four suns in the sky – red, white, blue and yellow’, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong (2016); ‘Standing Wave’, Armory Show, New York (2013). Her works have also been exhibited at Frieze London (2020); Times Art Center, Berlin (2019); Villa Vassilieff, Paris (2017); Times Art Center, Guangdong (2017); Chongqing Art Museum, Chongqing (2015); Penrith Regional Art Gallery, Sydney (2014); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2008); and Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2007).