WANG JIAJIA – POP THE CHAMPAGNE
2018-05-21Wang Jiajia, born in the mid 1980s, whose coming of age like many of his generation, was eclipsed with the popularization of the television, the advent of the Internet, and the ubiquity of popular cultures. With the accessibility of these visual registries, his paintings draw elements from art history, 80s and 90s comics, animation and pop cultures from Asia and the U.K., to reveal a strong personal universe of intense colors mixed with abstractions and figurations.
In his most recent series, Adventure (2016-), are composed of digitally sketched collages, gestural abstraction paintings as well as silkscreen techniques. Among them, one finds the motifs of video games from the 80s, logos from British television show “Top to the Pops”, the aesthetics of football jersey design, with which Wang hopes to articulate a strong sense of immediacy that is synonymous to the prevalent “click-bait” culture in the virtual reality of social media. The thick impasto and vivid colors underlain with digitally edited background imageries on the paintings, in certain cases coated in resin to provide a glossy quality, screams “look-at-me” to the viewers. This multi-layering process and choice of motifs suggest a deliberate narrative on the omnipresence of digital imageries of the contemporary landscape, beckoning the spectators to embark towards a frantic, angst-ridden and lustful journey where one longs for digital imageries.
Opposite – 666, 2018
Exhibition runs through to June 24th, 2018
Boers-Li Gallery
D-06, 798 Art Zone
No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
100015 Beijing
China
