Wang Keping's Personal Works

Wang Keping first appeared in new york at 1979, on the front page of The New York Times. The newspaper reported the first exhibition of "Star" held in Beijing in September that year. Wang Keping still keeps close contact with Star colleagues, but he thinks he is "very different" from them. Wang himself immigrated to France in 1984, where he continued his exquisite wood carving art-a totem-like modernist sculpture reminiscent of Gauguin or Matisse. With the passage of time, the political color gradually faded in his works. (He once created a work that carved Mao Zedong into a Buddha statue, which caused an uproar in Beijing) and became more moderate. Most of the paintings are women and couples.

Wang Keping feels neglected by journalists, critics and museums because he has no concept art of making installations or standards. "They don't understand, because it's too simple," Wang said. "There is no need to elaborate." The new work exhibited in Sucher is also his simplest work so far. Short people-some chubby, with spherical breasts, others tall and thin-are more like the almost abstract image of the late henry moore. However, Wang Keping said that they are still related to ancient traditions-wooden figures in ancient Africa, sculptures in the Han Dynasty and marble statues in ancient Greece.

A sculptor's creation needs a long and arduous process, which allows him to keep his faith in the original shape of wood as much as possible. He likes to chop branches alone in the Woods in the French countryside; After drying the wood for one to three years, he will start carving, grinding and burning the wood with a blowtorch to form dark paint on the surface. The end result is a curved shape, which reminds people of a person's body instead of introducing it. One of the branches became a woman's bun, and the branches that split in the middle became open arms. The curly branches turn into intimate moments between the two characters. ("Some of them are too private to be exhibited," Wang said with a smile.

"No one knows more about wood than Wang Keping," said Gwenoleezurcher, the gallery owner. Wang Weiwei smiled. "No one has made a woman's head like this," he said. Two China artists living in France created their own unique works with different materials and forms of expression with the theme of human body. Wang Keping's woodcarving and Lu Tong's oil painting will be exhibited in the Art Advocacy Gallery.

For more than ten years, Wang Keping has been using wood as a creative medium, from the waste materials in the Beijing timber yard to the broken wood in the French rural woodland, all of which have been transformed into magic through his hands. His recent works are gradually simplified, simple in style, full of sense of humor, full of wood grain and natural beauty of texture, full of thoughts and overtones. Wang Keping 1984 went to France for development, and his works were collected by Paris Municipal Government, Seoul Olympic Park and Taiwan Province Provincial Art Museum.

Lu Tong captures the romantic spirit in fantasy imagination with children's sensitive and curious eyes, gorgeous western oil paintings and vivid oriental sketches. His creation only obeys the call of the inner world, and he moves freely in the world of China's calligraphy, pen and ink and western colors, so that he still maintains his inner sincere strength within the changeable style. His works try to explore and reflect the mystery of life.

Lu Tong was born in Guangdong, and his paintings are rooted in China's philosophy. I went to Japan and other Asian countries and regions twice to study oriental aesthetics and fell in love with contemporary art. Then I went to the United States to study art, worked in the United States and Hong Kong, and moved to Paris in 1993. The joint exhibition of Wang Keping and Lu Tong is now held in the Art Advocacy Gallery, Room 3 15, Prince's Mansion, Chater Road 10, Central, and will last until June 15.