WANG KAI

王凯 ／ Wang Kai

1962, born in Suzhou of Jiangsu province, China

1989, graduated from Central Academy of Art and Crafts (now Tsinghua University, Arts&Design Dept.)

Currently lives and works in Shanghai

Associate professor of East China Normal University, Department of Art

Exhibitions:

2015    

God Knows, Renke Art Gallery, Hangzhou

2012    

In Transit, Renke Art Gallery, Hangzhou

2011    

Self-Examination, Renke Art Gallery, Hangzhou

2008    

Aquilaria Agallocha, Eye Level Gallery, Shanghai

798 Art Festival Theme Exhibition, Beijing

Digital & Photographic Time, No.10 Gallery of Art, Chengdu

2007    

Contemporary Representation, Wu Jiao Chang 800 Art Space, Shanghai

Artists’ Nomination/Invitation Exhibition, Yuan Art Museum, Shanghai

Shanghai Art Fair Emerging Artists Exhibition (Asia), Shanghai Mart, Shanghai

2006    

Chinese Symbols, M50 Space Da, Shanghai

Contemporary Art Exhibition: Shanghai Academic Culture, Shanghai Art Centre

Shanghai Abstract Painting Exhibition, Ming Yuan Group Art & Culture Centre, Shanghai

Contemporary Photography Exhibition, No. 1178 Wai Ma Lu Warehouse, Shanghai

Sea Level Paining & Scupture, Liu Hai Su Art Museum, Shanghai

2005    

Homage to ‘85, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai

2004    

2^cd Contemporary Art Invitation Exhibition, East Coast Museum

5^th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

2003    

Oil Painting Exhibition, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

Status Group Exhibition, HSS Art&Exhibition Centre, Shanghai

Different Choices:‘60s Artist Invitation Exhibition,  Peninsula Art Museum, Shanghai

2001    

Shanghai Art Exhibition, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

2000    

Serene Poetry: Wang Kai’s Solo Exhibition, South Taiwan Gallery, Taiwan

1997     

Chinese Abstract Ink Painting Exhibition, Centre Culturel de Chine à Paris, France

1995    

Chinese Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition, Chicago Gallery, America

1993    

Shanghai Youth Art Exhibition, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai

1989    

7^th National Art Exhibition, China Art Museum, Beijing

1988    

Expression: Wang Kai’s Art Exhibition, Tsinghua University, Beijing

PREFACE

Text / Wang Kai

In which world exactly are we living?

Facing with different times and spaces, I have often lost amidst the chaos. Facing with different events, I have often dazzled by different confusions. My brain and my soul are not on the same orbit, how far the distance between them? For the sake of demands and desires of living, and for the sake of the attitude of an idealist, I decided my dual life.

I observe my life, including reading myself (words and behaviors), like reading the traces of a chair or a symbol, sometimes I got emotional (sometimes narcissistic). About existence or non-existence, intervening or abandoning, or onlooking, once they were so entangled… The “archaeology” of myself starts from this entanglement, it also ends in chaos.

I do not expect the answer.

In the cultural sense, our lives are kept in the “generations” of traditions, but which one did we inherit? The history, kept in the words and expressions, still contains our imagination and illusions of  “here and now”, how many of them were “lost”? How many misread? Could those things, occurred between existence and disappearance, happened to be the “expressions of thoughts” or the “breathes of history”?

I began to suspect the things what human have done.

If art can narrate or portray those doubts, then obviously the humans can resist their reliance on history; if art can substitute for my breathes, then I would use it to resist the fears in my life. I think – I can’t! Indeed, we are living in an era that the historical remains and native languages are gradually deconstructed. The art is pushed by personal emotions into an overall thought or wishful values. The aesthetical inability is same with the passiveness of life, always leaving the mundane me in panic. ‘Speak’ or ‘not speak’, ‘do’ or ‘do not’… I am bearing too many hesitations in my heart. In the world beyond the mundane reality, there is a world composed by the verses of freedom, forcing us to fantasize an ideal life state. Obviously, it cannot be achieved by our ‘preceding and following’ logic, the perishableness of life cannot be retained by all those ancient and modern, home and foreign heritages… No matter in what manner, we couldn’t stop the self-termination of human kind.

 Am I a fatalist?

Then, life is a waste? This disturbing proposition is in accord with my understanding of art. Back to the thinking of ‘concepts’, I’ve cultivated several ‘strains’ therein, I use it to replace the ‘fragrance’ of live, but I refuse to, in a ‘contemporary’ manner, give phenomenological interpretations to our future! I am sorry, that I dare not mirror my naked body, I dare not look at my mendacious and vulgarity in the face, I can only doodle some fragments of my banal trivial life to fill my vacuous soul in the depth of night. It is the black hole of my own personal emotions. If this is some sort of ‘self-deception’, it could be a kind of ‘relieving’ state of life. The joy I gained is exactly from an artist’s characteristics of self-amusement, it is neither the sorrow for death, nor the eternal classics.

……

Anyway, our lives will hurry away, (including all those reflections and considerations, and those manufactured formalistic art).

In order to get closer to myself, to see myself, also to add some footnotes to this monotonous world, I decide to be an artist!

By self-examination, I hope that I could find back all those ‘brushworks’ once left behind in this transience of springtime, to see them drift along their own directions, where they want to go?

RALATED LINKS

news.artxun.com/hui-1607-8032501.shtml

news.artxun.com/news_205452/

VIDEOS

v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY5Mzk1NDk2.html

www.douban.com/event/24187724/video/611212/

v.qq.com/x/page/v01531wjzym.html

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