Scene.Object.Obervation
Weng Yunpeng
Art Seasons Gallery
23 February - 26 March 2006
Mon to Fri 11am - 8pm, Sat 12pm - 6pm
The Box, No 5 Gemmill Lane Singapore 069261

The pictorial sources of Weng Yunpeng's works seem to be photographs shot with the simplest camera. The artist takes pictures of and paints whatever interests him, completely relying on his intuition. They have a low-class point of view without any polish, as if revealing the aesthetic taste of a country bumpkin fresh in town. However, once you look closely, you will find that he is selectively taking candid photographs with a photographer's sensibility. The selected scenes and objects perhaps are interiors and exteriors from where he lives.

Works such as Manifestations of Life and Grocery in Baihe Street, Yanjiao, or cars, airplane flights, hotels and restaurants that he has patronized are panoramas that can be seen everywhere in cities and towns around China. Such works include Bus from Wuhan to Huangshi, Flight CA1512, No. 3 Shenjingta Alley, Nanchang, Room 1302, Gloria Plaza Hotel and Rest Stop on the Beijing-Shanghai Expressway. These representations appear somewhat disorderly and unsystematic. It seems that there is always something suspicious. Strangely enough, however, when the works that look disorderly and confusing are brought together, the disorder is unexpectedly turned into an invisible and unlimitedly powerful metaphor of a certain reality.

Today our fates are uncertain, we randomly vary our identities, and continuously move around. Nevertheless, there is a definite background underlying these various changes, which is the influence of the present-progressive tense of China's social transformation and cultural globalization. The influence, on the one hand, carries through the living circumstances in cities, towns and villages, noticeably reflected in the continuous capital, information and labor mobility in bizarre and motley juxtapositions. On the other hand, the influence is embodied in individual existential moments, dimensions concerning everyone, and yet dimly discernible, uncertain, mysterious and unfathomable.

With regard to making use of image resources in Weng Yunpeng's works, the most significant and most amusing is the presence of a TV/computer image in each painting. Most images are concerned with current world affairs and news items about diplomatic relations between China and other countries. In Weng Yunpeng's works, the overlap and combination of the media image with the mixed but ordered surroundings is both a slice of life and a unique way of discourse. It is also a way of creating his own visual world, directly responding and measuring the changes of reality.

His creative works cannot be merely commented on in a summary fashion as showing certain modernity derived from aspects of contemporary culture. Rather the paintings are referencing the cultural globalization trends and are a clear sign of new global experience in China today. The significance of his works lies not only in forming a new set of visual concepts and symbols to represent his living environment, but also lies in recording and witnessing the spiritual and emotional history in respect to culture. Having surpassed the goal of seeking mimesis, it reveals that his creations go freely back and forth and are reconstructed in new contexts, highlighting the role of uncertainty and the infinite possibility of change beyond control.

His paintings can be divided into those pertaining to the past and those relating to the present. A series relating to the past – for example Old Houses, Wuyuan, Jiangxi Province -- often bear unmistakable symbols of traditional households. The experience of everyone in the past is part of collective or individual memory. On the other hand, with subject matter chosen randomly, the works relating to the present (such as those mentioned above) present the vivid, strange and jumbled realistic look of China today. The so-called agricultural, pre-modern, industrial, and postmodern social formations exist side by side. It is the beautiful, mixed-up condition in which we live and with which we are never bored.