The expression of Wang Yifan's works has a natural personal flavor, rather than a subconscious and strategic expression, which stems from his talent in language expression and makes him easily impress people who have come into contact with him. In his paintings, installations, videos and even novels, we can see similar expression impulses, which have not been completely transformed into direct expression of formal structure, making these works have a rare simplicity and clumsiness. The narrative language of various media controls Wang Yifan's expression in artistic practice. His simple way of understanding the world makes him accustomed to putting his creation in the reality that can be told, so even the emotional part of his works is not difficult to interpret.
A blessing in disguise is his defense and proof of his situation before the deadline, and it is also the presentation of a new stage of Wang Yifan's artistic practice. The values and judgments poured into the works are undoubtedly contrary to the orientation of the so-called mainstream society and divorced from what we think of as the contemporary artistic context. In this era, the realistic philosophy of existence is the basis of the formation of mainstream values, and there are quantitative standards for personal judgment in all industries, as well as in the art field. For such a reality, Wang Yifan has always maintained an objective understanding and sought more eternal value for himself besides "gain" and "loss". The only way he can prove this value is to describe it with works and awaken its projection in the consciousness of others. "A blessing in disguise" is a new word created by Wang Yifan in combination with the idiom "A blessing in disguise" in China. Here, "Sai Weng" is used by artists to refer to the uncertain state of "how to know whether it is a blessing or a curse" in the second half of the idiom, which reflects the short-sighted pursuit of "gain and loss" in utilitarian society and expresses the artist's dialectical worldview. The painting of the same name depicts the image of an elderly husband holding a match, symbolizing the fire of energy, while the old man named Sai Weng is actually a metaphor of the artist's own real life. Most of the protagonists in other paintings are friends of artists or characters created in his story scripts. For Wang Yifan, painting is more important as a carrier to tell stories and convey ideas. In the realistic style, it is the artist's extremely personal discussion of time and humanity.
Wang Yifan's choice of materials has some natural relations with daily life, such as bathtub, trash can, airplane model toys and children's dummy models, which all mark the broken time node in his growth process and his inquiry into the ultimate meaning; Just as there is an implicit directness in Wang Yifan's installation works, there will be a taste of ancient literati landscape in China, but behind the quiet surface there is the running of the times and the noise of society; However, the plot in the painting works has clear hints in the story-telling topics, and the interesting hints brought by this connection make watching become reading and guessing.
In a series of narrative expressions, we can see that Wang Yifan's work style is very personal and romantic. This way obviously keeps a distance from the wider discussion, and it is an unconscious avoidance of individual's direct sociality. Just like the self-created word "A Saiweng is holding a fire", it lights up alone in the groping that is difficult to identify the direction.
Artist's interpretation
In an exhibition, Wang Yifan adjusted the hanging height of hanging "Blackboard" series works, which left a deep impression. Wearing a black cap and a blue T-shirt looks like two squares at first glance, one black and one blue. Reminiscent of the teenager who used to paint in Chen Danqing's studio and write stories on black canvas. Now he is already creating with these "blackboards".
Wang Yifan is clever. Not only did he have the ability to draw with two hands at the same time, but he was also a little genius in mathematics when he was a child, as evidenced by the prizes piled up at home. But when he grows up, he is more like a "bad guy", eating, drinking and having fun every day. He is willing to publicly show his so-called "man" side because he wants to be an artist who is "man" enough.
Wang Yifan also has his unique writing talent, such as his "Missing" series, which imitated the punishment of writing on the blackboard when he was a child. Wang Yifan has a humorous and relaxed style, which is used to describe his past feelings, meditation and secret-related stories in his paintings. Perhaps he also knows that few people will really finish reading the blackboard, so his Beijing accent and scrawled calligraphy make it more difficult for readers to understand, but Wang Yifan never changes his works to make them easy for others to accept.
Wang Yifan lives on the edge of the art circle and makes a living by teaching and doing odd jobs. He is willing to do all kinds of artistic experiments regardless of the feedback from the market-the experiment is to satisfy himself, but the unique artistic language he found reflects the truth of Beijing street paradox. For example, in his DV work "Watch Time-Wang Yifan's Clocks", he photographed the quartz clock necessary for ordinary families in China in the 1990s, recorded the state of the quartz clock in one day, and left his name in a special and secret way. During this long time, the camera has not changed at all, and the audience is unlikely to insist on watching the work, but watching the work at different times will bring people different feelings, just like facing the "truth".
Comment on Wang Yifan's solo exhibition
Wen Ming
At first, Wang Yifan didn't want to enter the art industry. Although he loves painting, he is more used to being a street punk. That's why we named his first exhibition: Rebellious Painting.
The main line of "The Painting of the Rebel" is nostalgia. Wang Yifan describes stories related to his past feelings, meditation and secrets in words on canvas, just like announcing his privacy to the world with a small blackboard full of words.
The exhibition held in Interstellar Space also includes Wang Yifan's 24-hour continuous DV work-"Wang Yifan's Clocks-Monitoring Time" and a series of installations called "In the Window". In this series of installations, Wang Yifan chose the broken window picked up from the demolition site and matched it with the image, forming a "in the window" work. In fact, he does not shy away from using dialects and teasing to express a kind of "rustic" as a Beijinger.
It is full of Beijing flavor.
Apart from Peking dialect, Wang Yifan seems to have no clear purpose. He is a "rough man" and speaks frankly. He is full of bad things, but he makes you feel excusable.
Wang Yifan's works are a provocation to the mainstream painting mode, and he greatly devalues the importance and emphasis of "painting" in the traditional sense. At the same time, his abuse of self-image is also a mockery of the big names and idealists in the art world.
Talking about an exhibition in Wang Yifan.
Wang Yifan: The paintings in this exhibition were painted between 20 10 and August and September this year. Some of them are models made by my friends, and the contents of the paintings are short stories I made up temporarily. It is possible that the story existed when painting this one, and the story of the first one was forgotten when painting the next one.
There is a painting called "People who can't find a radio station", which is related to my experience of listening to the radio since I was a child. For a long time, I always wanted to hear some news on the radio. Tune the radio aimlessly, and finally get nothing, and don't hear anything that you are really interested in or intend to listen to. But this is a process of waiting and searching.
There is also a painting called "The Man Who Discovered the Radio Station". Because I drew a picture called "People who can't find a radio station", I don't think it's a good idea. Since there is no radio station, people still hope to find it. So I drew an old man, gave a concept of time, and finally found the radio station, which is a kind act reflected in my picture.
Another painting is called News Listener, which is still related to my feelings about life. In fact, I was not spontaneous at first. I was forced by my family and could not do without news. Until now, as long as the news is broadcast, I feel that I can't miss it. I can only sit there and listen. But I don't know whether the news I heard is reliable or not, but I will continue to listen. I always feel that listening is better than not listening, and I will get information that others don't have and predict the future. I think many people are not very satisfied with their lives. In fact, they have been hoping to find their own possibilities in the news broadcast.
A recently completed painting is called "A Saiweng with a fire". I didn't ask people around me to model this painting, because I think it is more like a state of my life. Because my parents, including relatives and friends, have been chatting with me in the past two years, I have lost a lot, but gained nothing. But I don't think I can say that. I think I still have something. Although I can't say clearly what I got, and I can't produce evidence to stop others from talking, I especially like the story "A blessing in disguise is a blessing in disguise" since I was a child. In fact, people can't predict what the lost gains will tell you next. This story actually helped me resist the persuasion or criticism of many others, so I drew this picture.
I am interested in fire. Fire is actually a representative of energy. Both destruction and reconstruction need energy as the background.
X: Destruction and expectation are contradictory.
Wang Yifan: I'm not talking about contradictions. What I want to say is that it represents an energy, and when this energy exists, there are infinite possibilities. This possibility may be good, sad or impossible. But it has energy, which is greater than nothing in the range that people can understand.
Reconciliation depicts a man holding two bottles of potions, one red and the other blue, and pouring them into a test tube. This character is also a friend of mine. This man's face is very strange and wide, especially his face is big and a little wrinkled. Because he drinks all the year round and doesn't sleep, his face is always very tired. Plus, my face is full of fatigue and strength, and I feel good.
Generally, when I draw a picture, I don't want to make a composition first, but I want to think about what I draw. Sometimes I especially like a sentence about news, such as news audience. At this time, I can basically feel what the artistic conception of this painting should be.
Xie: For example, what about hue?
Wang Yifan: I liked dark colors when I was in college. I remember one thing that hit me hard. At one time, fortune telling was very popular in China. He was also practicing Qigong and fortune telling. One day when I was awake, I heard my little uncle tell my mother that he had divined for me.
X: What about you?
Wang Yifan: Yes. He said: "A person who will not become a profound person in the future should be superficial." At that time, I was surprised that even this could be worked out, and I was scared. Finally, I found that I still have such worries in college, because you are out of touch with society in college, and you don't know how deep and shallow you are or what kind of person you are. Later, I said that my painting should be darker, at least to cover up a little superficial power.
"Scabber" is a small plastic model next to the trash can. This plastic model is actually in front of a cheaper clothes stall not far from where I live now. I asked at that time, and he also took it from other people's waste. I remember this model when I was very young. A large number of models in China do this, with heavy eyebrows and eyes, which make the faces of Asians a little foreign. In my opinion, this model will bring a feeling that it was once prosperous, but now it has been abandoned. I still remember reading the comic book Astro Boy when I was a child. I remember crying after watching an episode, which was particularly sad. Seeing that Astro Boy had no strength, he finally sank to the bottom and was abandoned. Although a robot is nothing after losing kinetic energy, it still has a perfect shape. And a new generation of machines and rotten scientists are constantly producing new inventions. I was particularly sad to see them at that time. When I saw this model, it was spliced with the complex in the picture book. I feel like buying this thing back to show my strong feelings.
I've been thinking about what to put in this thing for a long time. Finally, I think it is better to put it directly next to the trash can, which directly means that it is about to enter the trash can. The feelings it describes are still very popular today, and most people exist, a kind of worry and nostalgia for the time that is about to pass away and cherished things.
"The airport in the old bathtub town" actually has my experience. Once I went to grandma's house, they said I was too dirty and needed a good bath. Only then did I know that it would take a long time to soak, and I couldn't soak in it. I'll bring toys in. All kinds of planes, cars and boats, as long as they are not afraid of water, I bring them in together and soak while playing. So it's clean. I think it's time. I summed up my playing style with a rational thinking now. I think when I play with planes in it, the bathtub is full of planes and it becomes an airport. But an airport can't be in a bathtub, it must be in a place that can hold enough things. I think the smallest location concept that can accommodate an airport is a town. Since this bathtub is a town, the periphery of this town should be a bit like that kind of hilly land, so I will cover it with soil. Because of its long history, it was named "Old Bathtub Town Airport". I did this because I have a deep-rooted habit. For example, I like to give nicknames to others, or change words, or add sentences or delete a poem. I remember Xie Moling saying that I was a little paranoid. "Bathtub Town" is actually that I went back and forth according to a concept and changed the concept of three or four floors, and the feeling was expressed at once.
Wang: I think he is very talented in narrative, including I think he uses several kinds of media now, but I think they all belong to narrative art. In fact, you are telling a story at the bottom of every topic.
(Welding 1 is a work that Wang Yifan himself can't explain clearly, and formal intuition plays a greater role here. )
Wang Yifan: Isn't there a word called "style"? It is something that many people want to chase. If I have style, I think it can show my style at my bedside, so high.
On the Complementarity of Different Creative Languages
As soon as I graduated from college, I felt that I couldn't draw. For a while, I found that the more I drew, the worse I got. I thought I couldn't draw anything, even lost all the self-explanatory things I learned at school before. But at that time, I knew I couldn't stop there, so I wanted to do something else. Of course, I won't be divorced from art. I just want to stop painting and make a device. When I started to do it, something more comfortable came. No matter how many years this form has existed in visual arts, it is still a new thing in the whole appreciation range of people, and not everyone has seen things on the street. It allows those feelings that are necessary but too many people can't say well to be mentioned again. Because its carrier has changed, the content also gives people a brand-new feeling, like charging, without aggression.
X: What are the satisfactory works during this period?
Wang Yifan: I am very satisfied with watching the time-Wang Yifan's clock and waiting for the rain at the window all day. When this expression appears naturally again and again, and then one day I find that I may not be nervous when I return to the picture. I don't have to think about how many things should not be put on the screen, just draw what I can say.
Wang Yifan in the eyes of friends
Wang: I am most interested in you. It has something to do with the ideological problems I have been thinking about. You always go your own way and are very lively. I think, especially the previous generation may think, what should we do next? It seems that you never do such a thing.
X: You need to mature gradually and comprehensively, and how to face the pressure of the whole society. In fact, social pressure is still reflected in you, and you are not completely immune to this thing. Although you are trying to prevent others from pulling you into the team they want, it still has a great impact on your life.
Wang: You certainly don't want to develop morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically.
Wang Yifan: No.
Wang is right, he would never think so, because he is a whole, and these things are bumped together. Wang Yifan and I often eat, and he never talks about art with me. This contains that kind of integrity and a certain degree of autonomy. From my observation from 2004 to now, I think he is an individual model, especially vivid. For example, he knows that there is no comparability between people.
Wang Yifan: When I started painting, I actually said it out of thin air. I didn't draw anything. I told Xie that I wanted to paint. He asked me what I wanted to draw. I said that the painting I want to draw is not new, not looking for a new sense of picture, but unconventional. If I have made a specific design for this painting, it is at this time. People tend to ignore this state because they put this thing impartially, but this state is particularly important to me. Because first of all, I confirmed that what I want to be known has little to do with this matter, but I can't make my painting too new or too traditional. If you do that, you will be forced to think with a thoughtful concept. In this way, both sides can avoid and express quietly.
Wang: His language is neither new nor old. The old language is an idiom, and the new language may be our online language. But he is still him. He just paints with his own spoken language and intuition. This kind of thing is very slow, wait for him to continue a state.