Classical mythology, personal fantasy, and collective hallucinations are carefully deconstructed then reshaped in this audacious, debut by artist, Wenjue at BANK's THE VAULT. Wenjue's grand, yet illusory narratives are embodied within the title of the show itself, a delightfully impossible word that conjures all sorts of mystic fantasies and yet is an "ism" - an ideology that becomes propagated onto the tactile surfaces of Wenjue's crest-shaped canvases in a regal blend of the archaic and hyper-contemporary.
Current online trends and classical historical imagery are interwoven into new fictional story lines like schizophrenic self-portraits. Out of countless possibilities, new life forces transcend the breadth of time and space to form a magical new world or even a new self because, as the artist states - "one self - is not enough" we are at once parabiotic and parasitic.
In an ongoing experimentation of the medium, Wenjue takes painting into the three-dimensional realm. Bas-reliefs ooze out of flat surfaces through the physical accumulation of oil paints, creating new definitions of and relationships between structure and image. Conceived as "artificial grottos", the works explore the details in the crevices and the deeper human obsession with that which is warped and deviant. The masked portraits and half-beast figures are intended to explore the sublimation of the human identity framework, providing an open space for multiple interpretations.
Wenjue had an unorthodox art education, pursuing, at an early age, a classical education at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and then apprenticing at Atelier François Legrand in France. He has since held exhibitions at Duolun Museum, Shanghai; Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing; Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Yantai Museum of Art, Shandong; Times Art Museum, Beijing and many other prestigious venues.
