Whitebox Art Center hereby announces the openning of Wrinkles of Object – Solo Exhibition of Wang Jiazeng on December 8th 2018. The exhibition will be chaired academically by Wang Min'an. It will be the debut cooperation between the Whitebox Art Center and Wang Jiazeng, the master artist, and over 10 of his masterpieces will be displayed in the gallery.

Wang Jiazeng’s works usually would theme on the industrial ruins in North China. He is skillful in representation of workers’ images, and elements like iron boxes and workshops are used as symbols to reveal the contemporary value of industrial abandons and wastes. Wang Jiazeng painted numerous human figures being wrapped up by iron sheets, who are surrounded by the metal in the likes of people being jailed. These individuals are not facially visible and are marked by codes. The upcoming exhibition will present his new works that will differ from the past patterns. What is new about the new exhibits is that they are presented like devices made of iron boards and steel plates. The artist shakes off from his conventional way of repeated layers of paints to outline the architectures and the space they carry, and he adopts simplified forms of art that will be hung on the walls.

The artists collected various abandoned metal materials, –aluminum and iron – and shaped them into wrinkled objects by continuous hammer-strikes, welding, grinding, a sense of dignity and gravity is therefore presented after the surface of the metals being made full of wrinkles and folds in a irregular way. Different from printmaking, oil-paintings present squeezed patterns and such haggard appearance adds to the sense of gravity. To Wang Jiazeng, iron, as a metal, is the very basis of industrialism, and it enslaves human in the industrial age. Iron is interpreted by Wang Jiazeng, ironically, as the symbol of industry and modern world. The metals have philosophic implication in them – humans are manipulating and manipulated by metal; humans harms and are harmed by metal. That the relation between humans and metals are mutual-twisting and tangled together is the law of the industrial age.

Wang Jiazeng’s new works goes beyond the narration of history. By establishing a metaphoric relation between the wrinkles and the audience, he tries to present an omnipresent heaviness on the viewers, in a seeming way that the viewer are personally under the pressure of such weight. Wang Jiazeng endows the works the meaning that the weight can not only be felt by human, but humans will be shocked by observing the weight falling on objects. Thus the audience will be brought into the reflection on the relation between rights and objects.

The Whitebox’s showrooms serve as enclosed space, on their walls hung the works of the artist. The exhibits are either tied up with steel boards or encased in metal boxes and they are coded as prisoners. In a limited space the works constitute an image of ‘Revenge”.

About the exhibition

Dates: Dec 8, 2018 - Jan 7, 2019

Opening: Dec 8, 16:00

Venue: Whitebox Art Center

Courtesy of the artist and Whitebox Art Center.