XIYAO WANG
b. 1992, Chongqing, China
Currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Xiyao Wang graduated with a BA from Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 2014 and later completed her second degree at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg in 2018. She obtained two MFAs, one from the State University of New York at Purchase in 2019 and one from the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg in 2020. Wang’s abstract painting can best be described as movement captured on canvas, as expressing a feeling of boundlessness and unbridled life energy. She combines various techniques such as oil and acrylic paint, chalk, graphite, and oil sticks.
Wang sees different materials as being like different people, each with its own personality and its own character. She combines a wide range of techniques, which complement each other superbly in her works. Wang invites everyone to unlock their very own imaginative spaces in her paintings, feeling free to discover her work for themselves and to connect it with their own story. Her works have the ability to sweep the viewer along, allowing a journey into the depths of the picture. Contrasting starkly with European abstract art, Wang's lines are loaded with positive energy. In the Chinese artistic tradition, she admits the beauty and joie de vivre which Western art has long since consciously encased in bitterness. Her paintings are a delicate, semi-conscious dance that inspires a feeling of happiness in the viewer, like being touched by nature, akin to how one might feel in springtime.
Selected solo exhibitions include “Before the Sun Goes Down,” Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok, (Thailand, 2024); “Touching the Invisible,” Song Art Museum, Beijing, (China, 2024); “Do you hear the waterfall?” Perrotin, New York, (US, 2024); “En L’air,” Frieze London, Massimo de Carlo, London (UK, 2023); “Allongé – Out of Reach,” Perrotin Gallery, Seoul (Korea, 2023); Art Basel, Perrotin Gallery, Basel (Switzerland, 2023); “Wild Garden,” Beijing Contemporary Art Expo, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (China, 2023); “On the Way to Penglai Island,” König Galerie, Berlin (Germany, 2023); “The Endless Dream,” Arndt Collection, Melbourne, Cape Schanck (Australia, 2022); “The Crystalline Moon Palace, ” Perrotin, Paris (France, 2022); “Castel in the air, ” Geber Stauffer Fine Arts, Zurich (Switzerland, 2021); “A dance to fly in the blossoming trees, ” A Thousand Plateaus Gallery, Chengdu (China, 2021), etc.
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions in recent years, including Art Basel, Paris (France, 2024); “Boundless Reverie: Chinese Savoir-Faire and Contemporary Art,” K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong, 2024); “The Arndt Collection: From One World to Another,” Shepparton Art Museum, Victoria, (Australia, 2024) ; “Questionings on Painting,” CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, (China, 2024); “Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics,” The Institutum, (Singapore, 2024); “Symphony of Coexistence – Chinese and Southeast Asian Art Invitational Exhibition,” The Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, (China, 2024); Art Cologne, König Gallery, Cologne (Germany, 2023); Art Basel, Miami Beach (US, 2023); “Unknown/Chronology/Object,” One Man At A Lonely Island Special Project, Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen (China, 2023); “The Arndt Collection: From One World to Another,” Shepparton Art Museum, Victoria (Australia, 2023); “The Collection Exhibition of Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute,” Chongqing (China, 2023); Art Basel, Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2023); Taipei Dangdai, Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Taipei (Taiwan, 2023), etc.