Wang Shang (b.1984, Beijing) is an artist and certified gemologist, whose work often explore the commonalities shared between the fields of geology, natural history, and human civilisation.
Ahuna No.210, 2017, stainless steel, screen print, 148 x 116 x 36 cm
He graduated from Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art. Upon graduation, he qualified as a certified gemologist at the Gemological Institute of America, and began working in the gem industry. He founded his own brand, the eponymous S.H.A.N.G. Operating a jewellery brand, a process Wang Shang has likened to “doing life studies in the countryside” or “experiencing life”. This has allowed Wang Shang to touch on and understand jewels from two perspectives, being simultaneously a method of art-making and commercial activity. Gradually, Wang Shang has built up knowledge and experience as a merchant and designer of jewellery.
Recently, Wang Shang has created a new series of sculpture, based on recurring motifs found in traditional Chinese gardens and landscape paintings – forms often used to embody and symbolise a state of ‘harmony’ between humanity and nature.
Sivatherium Sp., 2016, copper, stainless steel, 135 x 70 x 108 cm
Within the context of today’s discussion between technology and nature, Wang Shang brings to our attention the symbols of mountains and scholar rocks. A classical and pervasive theme in the East, nature is often idealised as a higher, truthful state of being. Seeking to rupture this narrative, the artist moves away from a depiction of mountains typically found within traditional ink landscapes, riffing on these motifs with ersatz sculptural versions using high-resolution images of marble surfaces. The surface of these 3D forms undergo further digital alteration with layers of colour and pattern, which are transposed onto abstract stainless steel shapes that resemble rocks and mountains. The surfaces together function as a geological palimpsest, acting to record a chaotic flux of colliding natural events, whilst also incorporating visible influences of human technological intervention.
Artworks become increasingly obscure yet clearly exchangeable, like jewels or any hybrid product. Rather than resisting such mechanisms, Wang employs the language and self-evident values within the art industry to disguise mundane commodities (well-crafted, glimmering, jeweled ornaments) as ideological production, thus problematizing the indistinguishable meaninglessness of art making.
Yuan Fuca on Wang Shang, FlashArt
Exhibition view at Statements, Art Basel in Basel 2017
In 2017, Magician Space presented Wang Shang’s solo exhibition at Statements section, Art Basel in Basel. Displayed on the floor are sculptures, consisting of multiple representations of rock and stone. Recalling shapes produced when minerals grow out from one another into crystalline structures – each ‘scholar rock’ will merge various aesthetic languages together into one unified form. By freely associating different languages of human culture to clash with the natural world, Wang Shang moves the rock garden away from a transcendental space of meditation into a zone of contested meanings that crash together. A light whimsical tone permeates across the celebratory garden-like setting within the art fair. It is an approach to the world that is quixotic, playing with inherited perceptions of the East, but also connecting more broadly towards the contradictions that lay rooted within our ideals of culture and technological progression.
Hadley No.53, 2017, stainless steel, screen print, 200 x 102 x 60 cm
Exhibition view at Statements, Art Basel in Basel 2017
About Wang Shang
Born in 1984 in Beijing, where he currently lives and works. Solo exhibitions: Statements, Art Basel, Basel (2017); Magician Space, Beijing (2015); OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen (2014); Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011). Group exhibitions: West Bund Special Projects, Shanghai (2016); A Contemporary, Shanghai (2016); Antenna Space, Shanghai (2015); Casa Dei Carraresi, Italy (2015); Between Art Lab, Shanghai (2015); OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen (2014); Mitsukoshi, Tokyo (2012).
All images courtesy of the artist and Magician Space
2017-11-03 15:45
