【展览现场】“王兴伟：恋爱砖家” | 麦勒画廊北京

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

麦勒画廊北京部荣幸地推出艺术家王兴伟（1969年生于沈阳）的最新个展“恋爱砖家”。本次展览呈现了王兴伟近年来的最新主题创作，展览特邀田军提供展览设计，极简的展陈更彰显出作品的轻松、明快和炽热。展览延续了艺术家一贯以来对于场景的娴熟编排，以及运用替换、夸张、引用、指代、双关等手法进行的持续而深入的探索。

展览以“度假”系列开篇，以明媚的海岛为背景，勾勒出疫情期间艺术家对于旅行和假期的美好遐想。艺术家因其对经典形象的戏仿与挪用，游戏于精英艺术与大众文化之间。在作品《马尔代夫》中，西方艺术史中安格尔的《大宫女》图示变成了身穿比基尼斜倚在火烈鸟游泳圈上的度假女人。

王兴伟，《马尔代夫》，2021，布面油画，240 x 300 cm
Wang Xingwei, Maldives,  2021, oil on canvas, 240 x 300 cm

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

恋爱与婚姻是此次展览中多幅作品的共同主题，以漫画为形式语言，艺术家为西方经典抑或是日常情景中的爱情故事赋予了其特有的幽默与戏剧性。其中《俄狄浦斯与斯芬克斯（求婚1993）》源自艺术家20世纪90年代的求婚经历。当时的中国正处于现代城市文明发展的初级阶段，对于西方文明的学习和效仿都较为粗糙与夸张。与此同时，艺术家又融入了今天时髦的比心手势。画面借鉴了漫画夸张的处理手法，并运用了浓烈的对比色加以渲染。画面中的人物关系某种程度上也类似于希腊神话中斯芬克斯向俄狄浦斯出谜语，谜语被成功破解的情景，在这里婚姻之谜被“爱”的答案所破解。这不仅是艺术家对于自身经历珍贵时刻的纪念与回眸，也用戏谑的手法将两个不同的时代予以巧妙融合。而《热恋》则延续了拟物与拟人合而为一的手法，以一种捉摸不透的态度呈现了一场令人啼笑皆非的海岛热恋。

王兴伟，《俄狄浦斯和斯芬克斯（求婚1993）》，2021，布面油画，240 x 200 cm
Wang Xingwei, Oedipus and the Sphinx (Proposal 1993),  2021, oil on canvas, 240 x 200 cm

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

求爱这一主题横跨2006年至2022年，一如艺术家对于反复描绘相似主题的执迷，展览中的“划船”系列可以窥见艺术家对于艺术创作的极致推敲与探究。2006年的《无题（小划船）》见证了王兴伟一次显著的风格转变，受20世纪20年代在上海流行起来的《时代漫画》影响，王兴伟舍弃一贯的写实画风，转向对漫画形象的实验，以最简化的线条和符号呈现生动的都市青年求爱场景。2022年，王兴伟大型个展“王兴伟在上海2002-2008”在上海当代艺术博物馆（PSA）举办，藉由本次展览，艺术家对其早期创作进行回溯，进而创作了更耐人寻味、也更贴合当下的《新划船》，同一主题的脉络之下潜隐着关系的波动，求爱场景中青年男女之间的眼神交流发生了变化，展现了与此前截然不同的情绪张力，社交媒体中流行的表情包似的符号更增添了画面的谐趣。

王兴伟，《新划船》，2022，布面油画，200 x 320 cm
Wang Xingwei, New Rowboat,  2022, oil on canvas, 200 x 320 cm

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

王兴伟游刃有余地在“主题绘画”创作的实践路径上笃定前行。在延续对个人生活体验和日常性的关注的同时，艺术家以荒诞、戏谑的手法将个体感受与时代记忆融为一体，以其古怪而机智的感知力为我们习以为常的日常注入迷人的超现实感，与此同时，也不动声色地将个人与族群、历史与当下进行转化与融合。

Galerie Urs Meile Beijing is pleased to announce the latest solo exhibition of Wang Xingwei (b. 1969, Shenyang) , titled Love Expert. This exhibition showcases Wang Xingwei’s thematic creations in recent years, coupled with a minimalist display that aims to emphasize the nonchalance, playfulness, and fervor that populate his works. We specially invite Tian Jun to design the exhibition. The works presented here continue the artist’s signature compositional dexterity, as well as his relentless and extensive explorations of techniques including substitution, exaggeration, quotation, reference, and wordplay.

The exhibition begins with the vacation series, set against the backdrop of a sundrenched tropical island, which evokes the artist’s yearning for oversea vacations and respites during the pandemic. By parodying and appropriating familiar images, the artist effortlessly tiptoes between high art and popular culture. In the painting Maldives (2021, oil on canvas, 240 × 300 cm), Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque, an icon of European art history, morphs into a woman in a bikini, reclining languidly on a flamingo-shaped swimming ring.

Love and marriage are the overarching themes that string together many of the works in this exhibition. Incorporating comic strips as the formal language, the artist bestows a unique sense of humor on these love stories, whether situated in Western classics or day-to-day scenarios. Oedipus and the Sphinx (Proposal 1993) (2021, oil on canvas, 190.5 × 150 cm) originated from the artist’s personal experience of proposing in the 1990s. At the time, China was caught between the early stages of modern urbanization, characterized by its relatively crude, amplified imitation and emulation of Western civilization. At the same time, the artist fashioned his protagonist with the trendy “hand-heart” gesture. The composition also draws on the blown-up, over-the-top aesthetic of the comic strips, rendered in strongly contrasting colors. The relationship between the characters in the painting somehow finds its parallel in the Greek myth, in which the Sphinx riddled Oedipus and was answered by the hero. Here, “love” solves the great riddle of marriage instead. The work symbolizes not only the artist’s homage and retrospection of a certain precious moment but a whimsical blend of two drastically different eras. Passionate Love (2022, oil on canvas, 240 × 200 cm), on the other hand, extends his typical style that merges anthropomorphism with anthropomorphism, presenting a ridiculous summer fling with an inscrutable attitude.

王兴伟，《热恋》，2022，布面油画，240 x 200 cm
Wang Xingwei, Passionate Love,  2022, oil on canvas, 240 x 200 cm

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

While the subject of courtship spans his works from 2006 to 2022—much like the artist’s obsession with depicting the same subject incessantly, one can catch a glimpse of the artist’s extreme scrutiny towards his creative process through the Rowboat series in the exhibition. untitled (Small Rowboat) (2006, oil on canvas, 100 × 120 cm) witnessed a watershed moment in Wang Xingwei’s career. Inspired by Modern Sketch, a Shanghai art periodical trendy in the 1920s, Wang Xingwei abandoned his usual realist style in pursuit of an experimental cartoonish form, favoring simplified lines and symbols to present a vivid tableau of urban courtship. In 2022, Wang Xingwei held a major solo exhibition, Wang Xingwei in Shanghai 2002 – 2008, at the Power Station of Art Shanghai, through which the artist ruminated on his earlier production and subsequently created the more intriguing and contemporary NewRowboat (2022, oil on canvas, 200 × 320 cm). Under the same thematic vein lurks the unsettling dynamism of this relationship, whereas the gazes of the young couple are altered in this iteration of the courting scene, revealing a novel emotional tension that is non-existent in the previous work, with the emoji-like symbols from social media complimenting the humor of the picture.

王兴伟，“恋爱砖家”展览现场，麦勒画廊北京部，中国北京，2023
Wang Xingwei, exhibition view of Love Expert at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China, 2023

Wang Xingwei’s practice has always centered around his “thematic paintings” throughout his career. While paying attention to personal experience and mundanity, the artist integrates individual feelings with the collective memory of our time through an absurd, mischievous altitude, injecting an alluring surreality into an everyday life that one is accustomed to with his quirky and witty perception. On the other hand, his works harmoniously transform and fuse the individual with the community, the history with the present.