Tang Contemporary Art is honored to announce that an important exhibition of artist Wang Qingsong "On the field of hope" will be hold in Beijing two spaces on July 11, 2020. Curated by Cui Cancan. The exhibition shows more than 30 important photography and shooting scenes created by artists in the past 20 years since 1999.
“On the Field of Hope” takes its name from a popular song in the 1980s, which extols the transformations of that era and forecasts a promising future. This song inspired Wang Qingsong when he was young.
Having become one of the most important artists in Asian photography, Wang has since built a body of work based on the dramatic shifts in Chinese culture from that time. He pioneered a narrative for photography in the 1990s encompassing a post-modern vocabulary, large-scale staged sets, and a vernacular aesthetic that opened the viewer ’s perspective to the ironies embedded in a consumer-oriented material world. Today, he continues to blend the techniques of painting, theater and cinematography to create multi-layered stories which extend the boundaries of Chinese photography and have altered the perspective of traditional Western photography.
Through socially impactful imagery, Wang’s body of work showcases the tension between changing societal realities and human desires, and imaginatively presents the ongoing drama that hovers between fields of the past and hopes for the future.
Four decades have passed since songs like “Young People Meeting” gave a youthful generation a sense of optimism. Wang Qingsong’s interconnectedness with and temporal distance from those popular songs give rise to nostalgic recollections as well as discussions of destiny and historical realities. Looking back on those memories and stepping into the future, we try to bridge the idealistic 1980s with the current pandemic in 2020.
On this field of hope, we bring together past and future, and look to new dreams.
Artist
Wang Qingsong
b.1966, Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, China.
Wang Qingsong, graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Qingsong has lived and worked in Beijing since 1993. He has more than forty solo shows in bptj museums and galleries at home and abroad. He participated in Gwangju Biennale, Taipei Biennial, Sydney Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale China Pavilion, Istanbul Biennial, Kiev International Biennial and etc. In 2019, he had his solo shows at Wuhan United Art Museum and the Museum of Photography Seoul, Korea. In 2006, he was honored the Outreach Award in Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France. He organized and curated Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale and Chengdu “Golden Panda Photography Award” exhibition. Now he is the artistic director for Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum.
His art works have been collected by more than sixty public art museums including the Museum of Modern Art (USA), Getty Museum (USA), San Francisco Museum of Art (USA), Queensland Art Gallery (Australia), Art Tower Mito (Japan), National Museum of Art (Brazil), Museum of European Photography (France), MUMOK (Austria), National Gallery of Australia, Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Daegu Art Museum (Korea), the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum (China), Guangdong Art Museum, Hubei Art Museum, and etc.
Curator
Cui Cancan
Cui Cancan is an independent curator in China, he has won Chinese Contemporary Art Award Critic Award, Yi Shu Award for Critical Writing etc., curated main exhibitions like Hei Qiao Night Way (2013), Xiang Cun Xi jian Chui (2013), FUCKOFF II (2013), Unlived by What is Seen (2014), Between the 5th and 6th Ring Road in Beijing (2015), The Decameron (2016), Curated solo exhibitions like Ai Weiwei, Xia Xiaowan, Shen Shaomin, Wang Qingsong, He Yunchang, Xiao Yu, Qin Ga, Xie Nanxing, Shi Jinsong, Li Zhanyang, Xu Zhongmin, Ma Ke, Xia xing, Zhao Zhao, Li Qing, Chen Yufan, Chen Yujun, Li Binyuan, Feng Lin, Zhang Yue, Zong Ning, Jiang Bo etc.