WENG Fen »
On the wall
Guangzhou Photo Biennial 2005
Exhibition: 18 Jan – 28 Feb 2005
Guangdong Museum of Art
38 Yanyu Road, Er-sha Island
510105 Guangzhou
+86-20-87351248
friends@gdmoa.org
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Tue-Sun 9-17
Very active artist, so much in China than abroad, Weng Fen is teaching at the University of Hainan. "On the wall" presents a series of young girls in sailor suit, leaning or sitting on a wall, contemplating the high rises drawn up in the distance, against blue sky,on the other side of the wall. The artist uses this wall to present two aspects of reality: the city that one sees in the distance is a new city, developed, with potentiality, a kind of metaphor, an ideal to which the young girls aspire, but it is at the same time a factitious nirvana, a kind of stage set. We only see a stirring silhouette of the young girls, from the back and faceless, but we know with certainty that this dubious nirvana, represented by the city, exerts on them a gigantic power of attraction. Weng Fen expresses first of all his mistrust of the city. In the process of urbanization, the pilgrimage towards the city became a kind of unconscious collective. If many artists today start to be interested in the problem, it is non the less treated by Weng Fen with originality. He indeed offers neither concrete description of city life, nor simplistic answer. He only tries to establish a space, to build a way in, to mobilize our imagination to cause our reflection. What does this city nirvana mean? What does it mean for the young girls?