Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2021
1984
China
Capsule Shanghai
Having graduated from the printmaking department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Wang Haiyang (b. 1984 in Shandong, China) employs a multimedia approach to expand the rhetorical scope of art. His work reflects on contemporary existential topics while investigating, through the medium of the body, themes such as identity, language and lust.
On the occasion of Liste Showtime 2021, Capsule Shanghai presents a selection of works by Wang Haiyang, ranging from painting and video to works on paper.
The untitled series of watercolors was initially created in 2018 to be digitalized into animations in Wang’s video The City of Dionysus (2018), first shown in his solo exhibition "Wang Haiyang" at Capsule Shanghai in 2018. In the year after, Wang expanded on the group and created the watercolor series Human Beast Ghost. These works were created during a period when Wang shifted his focus from large paintings to smaller pastels and watercolors, being mostly immobile in the aftermath of surgical operations. "This experience also informed Wang’s preoccupation with body horror, gender identity and sex… Exploring Wang’s work was akin to taking a darkly comic, engaging journey through existential autobiography." – Art Asia Pacific
The images portrayed in the watercolors are a whimsical yet haunting collection of human and post-human creatures emerging out of watery splashes of color, exploring the chaotic associations between sexuality, social disorder, and spiritual intoxication. As the figures morph and blur into each other, Haiyang’s work plays on the idea of metamorphosis and evolution, and the process of turning from representation to abstraction, from reality to imagination.
In a Dionysian sacrificial ritual, the fear of death unmasks human desires. The nightmarish watercolors depict scenes of revelry in the face of disruption and death, where physical form melts away as identity dissipates. Organs are arbitrarily juxtaposed with torsos; torsos melt together and collapse into abstraction. Here a human body no longer represents an individual life, nor is it transformed into an object. Rather, it is deconstructed to resemble the very origin of life - the primitive force at the dawn of existence, at the moment when life rises from death, and before the formation of the Self ...
Set somewhere between reality and dream, Untitled (2020) is a unique piece among Wang Haiyang’s new series of figurative acrylic paintings, which makes its debut at Liste Basel 2021.
A standalone piece counterbalancing the more abstracted series of watercolors sits on the opposite wall, where raging bodies emerge from watery splashes of colors. The painting realistically portrays three characters laying on a black-and-white checkerboard floor surrounded by a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Joining an intimate embrace, these androgynous figures transcend ...
Wang made the earlier videos with a stop-motion camera and pastel drawings on sandpaper that he erased and redrew to unravel a loose narrative based upon his own subconscious associations between images. The earlier pieces are immensely intriguing: you are watching a true Surrealist with a style similar to René Magritte unfold his subconscious like an exquisite corpse. – Peter Hagan, "Wang Haiyang Is the Enemy of Apathy", HuArt
Similar to the precedent videos Freud, Fish and Butterfly (2009) and Double Fikret (2012), Wall Dust continues to feature the character with mustache named Fikret. Whereas the two earlier videos reflect upon the artist’s studio practice, in which the visual elements pertain to and are inspired by everyday life, Wall Dust features the imagery of Fikret in duplication, situated in a grand genesis setting.
The grand scenes are juxtaposed with microscopic elements of cells and mucous membranes, forming shapes that resemble Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s portraits made of fruits and vegetables. The artist appropriates religious compositions and scenes of biological or chemical precesses in the attempt to delineate an unknown transcendental space. At the end of the video, Fikret incarnates into a real person, staring at drawings of eyes that lead to unknown dimensions.
Link to the full video available upon request. Please contact the gallery if you are interested.
Wang Haiyang b. 1984 in Shandong, China. Currently lives and works in Beijing.
Wang's works have been selected and received critical acclaim by more than 50 International festivals. In 2010, Wang Haiyang's first animation movie Freud, Fish and Butterfly won the Grand Prize at the Holland Animation Film Fest (HAFF). In 2012 Wang's film Double Fikret won the Silver Dove at the 55th DOK Leipzig Film Festival (Leipzig, Germany). In 2014 ...
Established in late 2016, Capsule Shanghai is based in Shanghai’s central Xuhui District. Situated on the first floor of a picturesque 1930s garden house in the idyllic greenery of the former French Concession, the gallery works primarily with emerging artists who push the boundaries of contemporary art. The gallery’s special focus is on artists who have personally and professionally migrated between regions, creating unique trans-national and trans-regional links.
From its inception, Capsule Shanghai sought to work with artists from China or artists who have established a profes ...