- Contributor
Description -
WANG XIAOJIN – solo exhibition
Art Scene Classic presents the latest work of Inner Mongolian artist Wang Xiaojin. The artist's oil paintings combine his own unique modern style with traditional Chinese culture and history. The work features graceful and delicate Chinese upper class women clad in traditional Chinese dresses in various scenes of leisure. The women’s proportions, express in an extreme, almost exaggerated way, traditional Chinese qualities of beauty – small hands and feet, a tiny mouth, etc. The artist captures the beauty and femininity of Chinese women in a traditional setting because he believes modernity has washed away the elegance once held by these women. In the paintings, the cool, expressionless women lounge demurely. Although the faces of these women are passive, their eyes express a cultural depth that turns the paintings into a narrative sequel. Their eyes express everything from boredom, melancholy, quiet seriousness to scheming.
Born in 1968, Wang Xiaojin began this series of work by painting his wife and his wife’s sister. The first painting in the series was entitled “Cinderella” due to the artist’s fond memories of the beauty and elegance of this childhood story. Another one of Wang’s influences is the Chinese story of “Hong Lou Meng”. As a child, he enjoyed the nice illustrations inside the book and imagining the traditional settings and Chinese drama. His parents even took him to see a Shao Xin opera performance of “Hong Lou Meng”, which sparked the artist’s imagination even more. After growing up, the artist’s childhood memories were still deeply engrained in his mind. Instead of throwing them out in the name of modernity, he decided to embrace his Chinese traditions and his childhood fantasies. The artist finds that the most beautiful things to him are his pure and innocent childhood memories. He says that when painting his works, he feels that he is painting his childhood dreams and escaping from modern day reality.
Contributed by eve2008
8 months, 2 weeks ago
- City Weekend
says -
In his latest works, Wang Xiaojin portrays the classical Chinese ideals of femininity and beauty. With rich and deep colors, Wang's oil paintings portray aristocratic women in a range of leisurely scenes. n these works, Wang attempts to capture the grace of traditional Chinese women in a modern society that seems to have washed much of it away. Except Mondays
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Wang Xiaojin describes his work: “I want to capture the beauty and features of women in a traditional Chinese setting, as I believe that modernity has lost an elegance once exemplified by such women. Within my paintings, upper class women in various scenes of leisure lounge demurely. The faces of the women are quite passive, but their eyes display the inner feeling of everything from boredom and melancholy to somber and scheming. Some friends and former classmates have said that they find my work to contain a kind of “sexiness”, due to the poses, expressions and makeup that the women adorn. Certainly, it is fine if they relate to my paintings in that way, but this aspect was not intentional on my part.”
The artist has his own website: www.wangxiaojin.com