Technique Is Only Half The Story I Chinese Artist Wang Min

V. Host I Wang Min I Acrylic On Canvas I 130x170cm

Technique is only half the story.  Artists need a point of view and the possibility for deep reflection.   Recent works by Chinese Artist Wang Min have the whole story.

Emerging Chinese artist Wang Min(b.1986) in her latest series “V.” has taken on the topic she has come to call genetic diversity.  What will we (more specifically our great great grandchildren) look like as a species when we begin to modify the gene code in pursuit of our more perfect designer children.

Wang Min’s pieces shock some at first and others question hanging one of her pieces on their living room wall.  One reviewer called these faces “a dystopic vision of the future” while others have cast her into a school of nouveau Pop Art or even called her a post Warholian.  For Chinese people of her generation, however, these pieces connect and speak to something deep and something real.  If you see several twenty year olds near a Wang Min it will be a matter of minutes before group selfies are being snapped.

V.6 I Wang Min I Acrylic on canvas I 130x190cm

V.1 I Wang Min I Acrylic on Canvas I 100x120c

Ray of Light No.9 I Wang Min I Acrylic on canvas I 60×60cm

Look closer.  The apparent simplicity of the images belie clothing and hair with complex patterns.  No part of the pattern is precisely the same.  The brush work is flawless.  The detail is precisioned.

Now look closer.  The patterns almost imperceptible at first become echoes of traditional Chinese paintings.  It is as if the ink on paper landscape remains even though the genetic markers that retain its memories have changed.  A mountain landscape can be garnered in the hair of one portrait and a marsh land in the clothing pattern of another.

Now look even closer.  The eyes look straight at you and even though this haunts, they do not hunt you.  These are no zombies and there is no malfeasance present.  These are not faces to be feared.  They remain our faces clothed in changed genetic garb.  There is not just flesh here but spirit also.  We are they.

No space aliens come-to-earth; we see in these extraordinary works by Wang Min a vision of our possible future self.  Flesh, spirit, and genetic memory persist – our species evolves … And everything emanates.