Josef Ng

Guo Wei continues to breathe new life into the expressive medium of painting. In his new exhibition, FABRICATION, the artist’s two recent series are an inquiry into the pictorial dimensions that forms more painterly transformations and attest to his relentless exploration and hard-won achievement.

Since 2000, Chengdu-based Guo Wei has had 11 solo exhibitions, both locally and internationally. The artist is renowned for his paintings that, in composition and portrayal, capture images of youthfulness in various unselfconscious moods. Essentially in the exuberance of youth, Guo Wei focuses on the individual rather than grander social issues, searching for the expression of an emotion as well as a composite image.

The artist has expressed that one thing he explores is the restless nature of teenagers. Attempting to reflect the implicit relationship between selfhood and the nature of reality, the artist fills his paintings with an awkward playfulness. For Guo Wei, the literary aspect of his paintings constitutes, an elegant but secondary element, with the more fundamental, determining force to his work, being the combined act of seeing and painting, which has not changed over his 18-year career.

In this exhibition, Guo Wei blurs the line between the painterly and the sculptural, with works that spurn conventional static form on canvas in favour of more makeshift, unstable ‘materials’ of expression. With the intention of bringing together the contradictory ‘contemporary, complex perception of the world’, the strategic display is also a key factor to the exhibition. Set in an unconventional tableau, which includes a studio-like environment, natural trees, and throwaway wasted debris, the main gallery space contributes to the feeling of a physical encounter with his painted subjects.

Within the sustainable exploration of an artist’s creativity, the studio is a pivotal location and condition to assist the artist’s own developmental practice towards the larger infrastructure of the contemporary art arena. Perhaps, the studio acts as a stage whereby experimentation in skills, techniques, discursive thoughts, and more importantly, self-liberation take place.

Using elements usually found in an artist’s studio as inspiration, the main installation comprises of a long wooden table, on top of which and around are a motley line-up of various sized freestanding figures, painted on plywood. Sporadically placed amongst the figures are painted representations of tools and paint containers, while scattered beneath the table are piles of wooden scraps, disregarded paintings, crates etc. This ensemble constitutes a multifaceted panoramic engagement, in which all the works reinforce one another while also successfully standing alone. Here, Guo Wei encourages the public to approach and pay attention to details – it seems we are meant to look for potential movement, passive or aggressive intent, utility – to induce a broader context that underscores the artist’s focused attention of multiple fabrications and stretches the physical dimension of painting. The three-dimensional form of the installation, reminiscent of pop-up commercial displays found in today’s urban shopping landscapes, also ratchets up the sense of consuming and embracing drama.

Painted on wood relief and configured into groups that are nailed onto the gallery walls, Guo Wei portrays his youthful subjects as iconic characters that take on a composite stillness. Through the body language of posturing, the projected compositions suggest spontaneous freeze-frame snapshots. Mostly full figure portraitures, the artworks flaunt an efficiently brushed illustrational style that celebrates the sweetness of youth, however fleeting, without sentimentality.

Providing a broader context for speculation upon the character’s personal lives, expressions of inner state and emotions, there is an inducing degree of finesse about the characterization of these unnamed subjects. This is evident in their bodily gestures, - an arch of a brow, the curl of a smile, or even a cheeky glance. Self-consciously costumed in loose slacks or denims donning slogan T-shirts with street wear brands and rock groups, some stand at ease, others push forward with a look of mild curiosity, with a few big-eyed teens posed craving attention. Guo Wei’s paintings of urban adolescence successfully engender the visual notion of interrelationships, dealing with the manufacturing consent that drives fashion, iconographies, notions of selfhood, and the experience of narcissistic proclamation.

Guo Wei has always related his figurative painted-narratives for reflection, interaction and critical consent. Appearing in this exhibition, however, is also an entirely different focus for the artist. Transporting us to compositions of landscape-based imageries, Guo Wei creates a tremendous pictorial presence in the form of three paintings, each made up of two juxtaposed canvases, with the front smaller in scale than the rear.

Lush landscapes such as mountainous frontiers, waves crashing against ocean rocks, and mini waterfalls, dominate the compositions. Suggesting the instable nature of life, Guo Wei adds thick, swirling brushstrokes, usually of a similar corresponding colour, against the white canvas background. Flowing out from the smaller painting, these windswept-looking brushstrokes declare themselves with a life of their own, although in disengaged awkwardness, their opaque application imbues an illuminating texture, adding a layered feel through their cumulative resonance. Juxtaposed with these paintings are renderings of historical yet controversial icons such as Mao Zedong, Suddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler.

Exhibited together in another area of the gallery with two other paintings, one of an ailing baby and the other a larger-than-life pink skull, the artist groups five paintings in an attempt to evoke fragments of human representation – primarily the nature of birth and death, and the intertwining of history and humanity.

Guo Wei’s interest in issues of representation, remembrance and translation, lead him to create a poetic weaving of disparate sources to form figurative motifs that isolate emotionally through interplay in dimensional effects. His handling of ‘three-dimensional’ figuration accentuates the physical dynamics of painting’s capability, creating a sensational connection of imagery and visual satisfaction.

Deep in the smallest gallery space, two adjacent corners are adorned with a tight multitude of Guo Wei’s flat coloured, time-defiant paintings on canvas. With dim lighting in the space, the artist has also painted the back walls with thick, black brushstrokes to heighten the disconcerting tone of the ambience surrounding the artworks. From bodies in various state of undress, to straight facial portraits, to depictions of garbage heaps of garbage, not one of these paintings can be pinned down to a specific time frame. Except, a cheeky portrayal of four figures standing together with their backs to the viewer, dressed in long coats and waving. They resemble the past and the present First Family of the United States. Though most of the individual works are livened with bright colours, when viewed as a whole, this cluster of paintings invokes a darker sensibility – triggering a disturbing sense of familiarity. Even though most of the images contain no apparent reference to place or time, the choice of subject matter, the collective grouping, the many shades of grey, a specific melancholic tone, together with a generous amount of pink or ‘skin-coloured’ hue, equates a sense of déjà vu. The experience of an existence, most, if not all of us, would have encountered.

Whether it’s the painterly sculptures or sculptural paintings, the spatial arrangements or the dispersal yet tight banding of images, the exhibition avoids defining a close agenda. Yet, common denominators may come across upon viewing or, at the very least, certain individual pieces make the whole exhibition worthwhile. Memory is multilayered, chaotic and unruly. What Guo Wei does in this exhibition is fabricate remembrance of characters and images for us to then engage with it.