In the landscape of contemporary art, Wei Guangqing has become a highlight, of which you cannot pass by without taking notice. With his unique visual pursuit, he has proved the fact that he, as an individual, is actually the miniature of the development of the contemporary art. Indeed, it necessitates a solid and profound study of his works in order to understand him.
Those who are familiar with Wei know that the transformations recorded by his visual narrations are the thought exchanges between him and himself, him and the society as well as him and the others. He has a famous quote: “it’s of infinite joy to fight with yourself” and as he fights with himself all the way along, the truth of his thoughts resurfaces time and time again in the comparison between the context of his real life and his multiple works. And indeed, understanding him requires multidimensional exploration, namely from the perspective of art, life and artistic education. As a matter of fact, Wei is not after the obscurity in visual expression, but rather the intentional concealment of his own thoughts. Amid the visual texts constantly created and the visual puzzles constantly posed to the readers, his true thoughts have all been intentionally “transformed” or even concealed completely. On the one hand, he is profound and serious, on the other hand, however, he is also very “cunning”. As readers are wrecking their brains out to figure out the visual puzzles he constructed, his thoughts, which he treasures the most, are already hidden in the fascinating images.  
Wei’s art works are full of diverse exploration and eventful expression as well as the multifold and complex relations between his individual style and social memory. But it should be noted that the complexity of reality will inevitably lead to his artistic complexity.

1. A Long-Premeditated Ritual
What really brought Wei his fame is the work A Simulation Experience on the Suicide Scheme about “1” at the end of 1980s, which resembles behavior and incident art. Actually what we have known about the meaning of this work is incomplete as his real intention was to make an anonymous phone call: someone was attempting suicide in a Chinese art museum. Though, out of a reason known to all, the exhibition was called off because of the “shooting” incident, this work of his demonstrated a certain arrogance and wildness of him as a youth. He exposed not only the vulnerability of life but that of social relations as well. His passion for rebellion in his solitude can be strongly felt in this work. That’s because, at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, the society was indeed very exhilarating and thrilling. Drama lies in the rapid transformation of social structures and the expanded and deepened social transformation itself. That was the beginning of thought liberation as well as reform and opening up when the social energy was at its apex, but that was also a time when the society was plagued by confusion and ambition at the same time. Rapid social transformation, the desires of the people, endeavors out of personal motives and the surges of thought waves made Wei render his experience in such a way. This work is a memory of a daily experience etched in his soul and the tumultuous times he experienced became without doubt his source of inspiration. It has seemingly also proved the fact that he had faced death, which in a way heralded the end of an era.

Valuable indeed is that Wei, by breaking through the grand political vocabularies, has laid bare his thoughts on reality, thus his visual expression is able to emit great passion even when read today, rendering you spirited and exhilarated. It is a long-premeditated ritual, taking you into contemplation while having you amazed. He fully aroused the senses and imagination of the readers, exposing to them not only the venerability of existence but that of reality and life as well. Venerable are also politics, ecology, economy, technology, daily life, feelings and honesty, which was absent everywhere in the society. It would never be an exaggeration to say that such a preemptive visual expression was something earth shattering at that time. It powerfully illustrated Wei’s renewed thought on contemporary culture and cultural disillusionment for a man with conscience could never be indifferent towards such a boring age, moreover, it is his nature to think in depth, detail and with an everlasting perseverance. However, the reality is disillusioning, and ideal dreams are often shattered by it ruthlessly. His very idiosyncratic visual expression also led to his journey to diverse visual representations. The profundity of this piece lies in that it coincides with the thoughts of Wang Hui, who wonders the way in which we can approach the answer to social transformation. “Many problems emerged in this society in transition, which are unprecedented and are hard to answer with our existing knowledge and intelligence.”

“The fleeting age of 1990s is when new theatre, economy, politics and culture unfolded with the end of the century of revolution. They unfolded so quickly that the connotations of ‘political situation’ acquired fundamental change. If it is left undefined, then it would be impossible to apply all the familiar categories, including ‘political parties’, ‘nation’ and ‘the people’, to the analysis of this age anymore.” (Wang Hui: The Depoliticized Politics: The End of the Short 20th Century and the 1990s )

2. Farewell to Modernism, Pursuit of Expression through Image, Less Politics and More Entertainment
Around the creation of A Simulation Experience on the Suicide Scheme about “1”, Wei actually had another group of strongly modernist works, of which Secret Celebration is the most well-known. This work is currently on display in the exhibition “A Documentary Exhibition of Art in 20th Century Hubei”, which also boasts many other documents of works of Wei, including the relevant documents on the work Tribe, Tribe as well as the original Time magazine that has Wei’s Age of Materialism on it. From those works and documents, it is easy to see the efforts made and the responsibility shouldered by a visual intellect and his modernist complex at that very stage. That was the time when a piece of literature or an art work could create social sensation. But when it comes to the 1990s, the mainstream status of art works gradually disappeared, on the other hand, the understanding and reflection of intellects on that period of time was rather hasty and limited. “Not until the mid-1990s did Chinese intellects recover from the previous turmoil and cast their eyes at this strange age that they were in instead of the past.” (Wang Hui). The reason why contemporary art is able to maintain its bit of vitality is due to the unique utopianism specific to the 1980s: experiencing the social changes and trying to conceive new thoughts and interpretations based on that. One fact that hit us in the face was the formation of the market era and the complex transformation due to it. As with the end of many ages, Wei acutely sensed the coming of a market era. This is when he bade farewell to his modernist period and entered the image period as he plunged into the pursuit of contemporary culture.

Without doubt, as the market economy develops, we are more and more immersed in an urban culture that has such great appetite for sensation, novelty and excitement that the public are no longer fascinated by traditional aesthetics, and as emphasized by Daniel Bell, the most outstanding feature of modern urban life is the stress on visuality, which is the symbolization of a unique lifestyle of diversity and excitement. It embodies the efforts to capture the varying multitude in a rapidly changing urban life and the mysterious and complex perceptions of the individuals. Therefore, it wouldn’t be hard to see that the Red Wall series are a perfect match for Wei. The series contain delicate structures and the strength of repetition and plurality. The color saturation is miles apart from the dark grey tones before. As he tries to produce modern expression filled with traditional narration and symbols, his passionate contemplation and insightful reflection of the changing society are shown. Inevitably, as ideologies vary with each passing day and the age of image suddenly emerges while urban trends run prevalent and mass culture floods the world of globalization, we will have to figure out our stance towards the western thoughts: should we absorb and make use of them or be more aware of our cultural traditions? With regard to this problem, Wei, through the key words including Red Wall—A Harmonious Household, Red Wall—Zhu Zi’s Family Maxims, The Distortion of Eroticism, The Extended Virtuous Words, Thirty-Six Stratagems, Jin Ping Mei, Made in China and so on, scans the conflicts emerging as the traditional Chinese society marches toward modernity. From these works, we can see that Wei attempts to identify the numbing influence of those plausible conclusions in the past. This group of works has completely broken through the ornamental and insignificant clichés on traditional culture, because Wei questioned the vicious cycle of desire—consumption—greed—disillusionment—new desire. His visual figure of speech has not only questioned people’s common perception of art but also made a thorough-going breakup with the mainstream art. At this stage, he, already in the center of art, corresponded very subtly to the sensitive social nerves with traditional symbols and verbal signs, such as “e-era”, “digital” and the English word “China” along with bar code. His various groups of works filled with innovation and passion have given him a deserved access to the community of top artists of china, and have maintained the public attention. The reason for this is not only the reputation established and uniqueness of him, though they indeed enabled him to take a preemptive strike. He is self-aware of the sensitive experience of individuals in the contemporary society and the age we belong to. Without exaggeration, the individual experience and social memory he expressed, his questioning to the society with his intuition and his cultural position fortunately made him as an important figure in the development of the art history. When we look back at this period of time in history as we try to reconstruct the cultural and historical context now, we can still feel the surges of innovative passion deep down in his heart.

What he focused on are the various visual adventures after his farewell to modernism. Tough innovative in style, the works are still his most direct observation and most sincere experience of the contemporary society and his artistic life. His visual expression was not in any way limited by the concept--“Hubei Pop Art”, but rather it took on, relatively early in time, an international and cross-boundary appeal. As he walked straightly into the depth of culture and history, recording the times in a discernible way, he also initiated the individualistic historical narration that he was very good at. During this process, he embedded, step by step, the destiny of individual, living circumstance and the zeitgeist into the history, but all these, at the same time, could also be fused into his sensitive life experiences. With his personal visual contemplation and passionate expression, he transcended the history and the reality, combined the traditional and the contemporary and reconciled the oriental and the occidental, after which, he eventually returned to the reality and left with us a prism of thoughts. In this prism, he silently and naturally formed his own way of looking at the world, which was inevitably internalized into his own art. Meanwhile, the readers’ comprehension and understanding of him also came from these images. Therefore, it can be said that his art is inseparable from himself and his experiences. When the “Hubei Pop Art” emerged unexpectedly, he has already established his own approach to visual narration and his own visual characteristics firmly. Once and again, he told us about what’s local and global, past and present, traditional and contemporary as well as the changes to the destinies of individuals in the social, political, economic and cultural transformation in a Chinese language.

Only through his visual narration, can we truly understand why Wei, who believes “it’s of infinite joy to fight with yourself”, managed to accomplish major achievements when he was still young and lived a colorful and splendid life. That’s because the age that we have been in is included in his narration. Through his various visual practices, he enabled the readers to feel his acuteness and intuition as well as his sensitive observation of the ages. As always, he followed his own train of thought and walked step by step from the bottom of his heart to the depth of the society. Through his enthusiastic narration, the readers are able to know that he did not shoulder the history in a sentimental or pessimistic way but rather seized the age with his intuition and sensitivity. His visual narration is both coexistent and confrontational with his symbolism, and it is from these intricate and mysterious images that his own figure of speech makes a strong encounter with the readers. His imaginations and fantasies not only involve the tradition but also the reality, and even the future. They also demonstrate the demand of the public and social changes. What he created was not the real history, but a deep concern and profound contemplation that permeated the society. It’s anxious experience of living and anxious status of reality. His world of art shares the same time and space with those of the real world. His conceptions and his world of image perfectly coincide with our social reality and cultural imagination.

Of course, the fact that his works becomes less political and more entertaining establishes a distance from the art “championed” by our age in which he keeps a distant review and observation. Actually, in his images such as the The Distortion of Eroticism series, porn stars of various sorts directly become symbols of consumption. It is a representation of our real life full of desire that comes with the consumption society. No longer indulged in the excitement for a big time in history, he has realized that his lonely rebellion confronted by different ideologies has been totally consumed by the prevalent mass culture. The social reality at this time is full of popular public images where movies, TV programs, advertisements, magazines, VCD and fashion constitute a social landscape plagued by rigid images and photo parodies and imitations. So, in face of these beauties and stars, you are not encouraged to get to know them, rather, the works are asking you to focus on the cosmetics and accessories used by these stars, in other words, the significance of symbols.

Now we can see that Wei has turned from seeking external subjects to expressing his personal experiences and that he has combined his idiosyncratic language with contemporary visual experience. However, the gaming mentality, symbolic insinuation, innocent figures, gaudy portraits and charmingly sexy but not erotic images do not contain deep significance, and indeed, what’s intended is not encouraging you to discover its real connotations but to impress you strongly. Especially as these beauty figures are constantly repeated, enticing and exciting you till your senses are satisfied and desire aroused, you would eventually give up your visual experience and be forced to see from the images a representation of the consumption in our increasingly commercialized society, that’s to say, in this urban culture, as we are creating an incredible amount of wealth, human beings are gradually alienated as a symbol and a carrier for consumption in this commercial world. No wonder Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist, said “the world is out there and pop art is about observing the world”. And such is the reality facing Wei—a grotesque, colorful and fascinating commercial society filled with various consuming motives that encroach on people’s souls. Since then, the political symbols in his visual landscape are gradually replaced by commercial ones and at the same time, the simplistic images and rich colors also emit a wash of relaxation and joy. But undoubtedly, entering the 21st century, Wei once again brought to the readers his typical visual amazement and ignited their expectation.  

3. Reestablishing the Relation between Individual and Social Life
Indeed as Wang Hui once said “the departure of the 1990s, like the end of many eras, should be marked by an incident.” In this respect, Wei, who waved goodbye to the 1990s, began to renew his consideration on reestablishing a relationship between him as an individual and the social life. He began to experiment with diverse approaches to visual expressions and to constantly produce installations that went beyond the surface, which, to him, are the channel through which he may establish the relation with the social life. But still, his works have maintained their vitality and novelty as they run counter to the academic conventions. Such vitality and expressiveness are reinforced by his constantly readjusted visual language. And his masterful command of historical and cultural symbols has become the most powerful and realistic visual tools to conduct visual reflections on this contemporary society. Moreover, his own perception endows him with a unique ability to have an insight of the conditions and confusions surrounding this society. On the one hand, he found a proper way to express his own thoughts, on the other hand, the continuity of style does not separate him with individual expression. From the perspective of sociology, he was able to interfere with topics including capital, power, consumption, desire, lack of moral traditions and the reuse of traditional culture in the global context. The combination of traditional cultural symbols and images and the current social situation fills his works with the logic and beauty of our age.  

Therefore, it would be easy for the readers to see a Wei that progresses from reading history, writing history to reestablishing the relation between him and the society, a Wei with profound knowledge of the world as a whole who constantly stresses on narration through images and a Wei that combines the pursuit of urban sentiments with personal visual experiences and turns his attention from the market economy to the society. The visual narrations at different stages in his development enjoy an inherent consistency and an inherent uniqueness, which can be seen in his Waste and Truth. The work Plum, Orchid, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum on the other hand has aroused peoples’ impulse for innovation. The transposition and reconstruction of geographical samples in it encourage us to reflect on the relations between man and society and man and nature, demonstrating the motivated actions in the Chinese society as it transforms and marches towards modernity. Such constant contemplation, the contemplation of the various transformations: the transformation of a traditional society into a modern one, of an agrarian civilization to a modern and industrial one and of a rural society to an urbanized one, is consistent in all these installations.  

If you try to interpret this series of installations, you will find the obsession with books, desire for a print culture, preference for words and the reconstruction of order, because Wei has once created Yellow Book and Black Book. Although these works are not very well known and his Notebook is still in exile overseas, there is no gap in his thinking and perception, as his later installations are all related to words, books and print in one way or another, including the recently created Plus or Minus Zero—Grandstand. The visual texts, cultural and visual frameworks of these installations overlap each other and though their cultural focal points vary as the society develops and reforms, the complex social conflicts, especially the gaming between different interest group in this transition, hidden behind the contrasting modern ideas and the confusion at the impact of modernization and globalization as the social and cultural power structure transforms greatly, remains the same. His installations are all embedded with Wei’s habitual thinking pattern and strategy, illustrating the relation between his personal times and the big society. We can see he has turned from the lonely rebellion in the past to the personal and fragmented narration, but what remains is still the interaction between the traditional and the contemporary, the history and the present, the oriental and the occidental as well as that between what’s regional and global. The field he is in is the space with different dazzling social relations interweaved with each other where his narrative strategy and habits lie. Plus or Minus Zero—Grandstand has not only exposed the powerful strength of conventions and the hatred of it, but also the representation system with various features determined by the relation between power and humanity. In Grandstand, every step up the staircase signifies a gaming between resistance, power and humanity. Just as the overlapping and entangling lines, we are constantly building the stand and demolishing it and it should be noted that the relation between demolition and construction is exactly one demonstrated by the Red Wall series. One might be your friend today, but your enemy tomorrow, building the stand for you now and immediately destroying it behind your back while the human warmth still remains on it. Such process is repeated once and again, the resources consumed encroaching upon people’s souls, leading to the total absence of basic political, moral and commercial bottom line. While we are so close to each other physically, we are also so far away spiritually. We cannot help but wonder why we are so cold and indifferent. Such is the reality and dilemma we have today. Now, I believe the readers, through my interpretation, can see his insistence on innovation on the one hand, and his consistent narration with a focus on the key words and his ability to capture timely the formation of values and the conflicts. The stairs of the stand, moreover, can also be seen as the various forces resistant to social transformation. It seems that everyone wants to break through them, and breakthrough is seemingly the solution given by Wei to the problems in social transformation and the meeting of different cultures. If the reality embodied in Grandstand is rather heavy, then its artistic appeal is plain and grave. It is filled with the passion of this era and jumps out side of the artistic box, creating a sense of familiarity, sincerity and profundity that’s both reasonable and unexpected, and a mood of sadness that has yet to develop into sorrow. Just as the poem of Bian Zhilin reads:    

As you are enjoying the scenery on a bridge
Upstairs on a tower people are watching you
The bright moon adorns your window
But you adorn others' dream
Then what kind of visual ideas do the stairs on the stand give to their readers? I believe as different readers understand this piece from on, below, in and out of the stairs, they will form diverse interpretations.

4.From the Construction of China to the Deconstruction of It
Wei’s case is a visual witness to the 30 years of contemporary art development. If we see from his logic of visual narration the end of the planned economy and the beginning of the market economy, then we must also have noticed the farewell to the awkwardness of regarding class struggle as a guideline, the full embrace of thought liberation and reform and opening up, moreover, the structural change of the Chinese society and its openness and inclusiveness. As a matter of fact, people’s impression of Wei is no mere his heroic youth but the traces of explorations specific to himself in the contemporary art community with his own interpretation of history and culture as a representative artist of the “Hubei Pop Art”. As his Red Wall series become the spiritual code and cultural mark for our generation, Wei today has also turned from the sharp youth he once was to a flexible and profound visual intellect, but his attention to people’s living conditions, his questioning to the authority, and his cultural insistence have maintained his artistic excellence and the support from the depth of his humanity.  
Behind his visual landscape is a Chinese knowledge structure that goes from the construction of China to its deconstruction. if the Red Wall series, Jin Ping Mei, Thirty-Six Stratagems, The Extended Virtuous Words embodies the construction of China (and his obsession with chess), from which we see the need to reconstruct the international political pattern and the social order, we see, on the other hand, the deconstruction of china as well, embodied by the hidden words, English letters, bar code, chess and “made in China” in the images. Furthermore, we see the change brought about by the reform and opening up policy to the material and the spiritual world as well as the odds and the unpredictability of the varying society as china approaches globalization bit by bit. Wei provides with us a multidimensional perspective to look at china: as the Chinese society is more and more involved in the capitalist world and as it becomes a part of the global power structure itself, the lives of the Chinese people today are also deeply involved in the global circulation of material and culture goods. The visual experience brought about by such social transformation, obviously, is hand in hand with social development. If the Red Wall series and Red Wall-A Harmonious Household are constructed of emotions rooted in China, then the installation series after that, including Waste, Truth, Seal, Base and Plus or Minus Zero-Grandstand present the logic and thinking methods made in China, which is indeed a deconstruction of China. Thus, a Wei who zooms in art as an issue of existence and life comes to the audience.

Wei in real life is not only full of loyalty and heroic valiance but also humor, with which he has attracted a lot of friends. In terms of art education, he has become one of the 85 stars celebrated in the 85th anniversary of the China Academy of Art, sparkling as he ignites the creative brilliance of many young students. His basic educational philosophy is “first of all they need to learn to think. They should be a thinker when thinking and a scientist, experimenting when they create.” Another outstanding aspect of him is that he never denies his students. Nowadays, Wei and his art experience have already become a legend, encouraging young student’s generations after generations to forge ahead bravely on the path of artistic creation. Such torch-passing is exactly the driving force for the contemporary art to move forward.


5:30 am, 13th October, 2015
At Sanguandian, East Lake