INDEPENDANT CURATOR
WANG KEPING (CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE) | Museum of Asian Arts, Nice (France) | 2008
Exhibition curator: Lina López
Artist: Wang Keping
Wang Keping work abruptly liberated Chinese sculpture from all the rigid conventions that surrounded it, and this “from the moment it was recognized as an art form in China”. This new freedom has stimulated young sculptors, allowed a new development to those who were already known and opened the way to a vast enrichment of the range of styles and modes of expression.
Exclusively worked in wood, his works are of striking power. It is in the tree that the genesis of the forms that interest him takes place. Each piece of wood seems to have been seen in the hollow of the trunk that carried it. Wood only changes its body. Its heart carved by the balls that will become mouths, all kinds of bodies and limbs. There arises a multitude of silhouettes with massive curves of a formidable expressiveness.
These representations ignore the concern for detail, neither figurative nor completely abstract, they are inspired by the principle of Taoist unity where man and animal belong to the same reign. Rarely one feels in sculptures such a connivance between the dynamics of the natural development of wood and the carved work that flows from it.
Wang Keping has an almost anatomical knowledge of the material, which allows him to respect the logic proper to the wooden, making the most out of it.