The Fortuitous Encounter of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella on a Dissecting Table
Out of a wide range of Wang Haichuan’s works, “The Fortuitous Encounter of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella on a Dissecting Table” mainly focuses on his paintings on various, sometimes least expected surfaces, beginning from commonplace canvas to rare Tibetan paper, wooden window frames and actual wood trunks.
The phrase: “as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table” that André Breton discovered while reading “Les Chants de Maldoror” by a French 19th-century poet Comte de Lautréamont became an underlying principle of the surrealistic movement. It commands a juxtaposition of two completely foreign realities that challenges an observer’s preconditioned perception of reality. This idea also defines the structure and aesthetics of Wang Haichuan’s paintings. Taken out of their common context, image-elements that appear on Wang Haichuan’s paintings are carefully selected to narrate the story that the artist intends to share with the viewer. However, much of what is presented as purely impulsive or unconscious is actually strenuously revised and thought through.
Wang Haichuan navigates, sources and compiles a vast collection of imagery from high and mass culture, from figurative and abstract, to the most mundane, religious and out-of-the-ordinary.
He interweaves reality, dreams, and metaphors into discourse of his painting. However, the artist is not concerned with drowning himself into an excessive interpretation of each element he includes in the painting but instead he engages in creative practice of the story telling that continues to stay connected yet distant from the reality.
One may ask how to navigate through a vast collection of images so generously presented by the artist in this exhibition.
By trying hard to make sense of every single element we risk to get lost ourselves in the fragments and fail to see a bigger picture. Perhaps, sometimes it is meant to leave some things unencrypted, so that a new unique and unprecedented idea can arise for a story or even a novel.
- Contact:
- Art+ Shanghai Gallery
- gallery@artplusshanghai.com
- +86 21 63337223
_Infinity_by_Santiago_Medina_PhotoCr100x100_c.jpg "Santiago Medina’s “Infinity” is made with highly polished Italian stainless steel and displays in its organic sculptoric form, the infinite symbol. The sculpture measures 24 inches in height by 12 x 10 inches. Infinity is pictured in front of the Colombian landscape where it was cast in stainless steel at Medina’s studio in Medellin, Colombia and will be shipped to its permanent home at the Tisch Library, Tufts University, Boston, MA.")
