For Yellow – the first solo exhibition of work by Wang Guangle in Europe, Pace has brought together a selection of the Beijing-based painter’s more recent works. Spending months at a time on individual pieces, Wang imbues his canvases with a sense of the temporality of his medium. Described as a ‘vessel of labour’ and ‘marker of time’ Wang’s canvases bear the importance of process in his craft, but the works are also successful in their complication of the abstract and subsequent sense of calm they illicit. The curatorial decisions made by PACE highlight the use of yellow in Wang’s work. Despite having no prescribed meaning for the colour, Wang embraces the many connotations of yellow, ranging from timidity to a more Chinese connotation of the erotic.
The exhibition draws on works from three of the artist’s distinct genres: his Terrazzo works which take their subject from the floor tiles of one of his first studios, his Coffin paintings – methodical layered paintings inspired by the tradition of coffin-painting in his home province of Fujian, and a series of Untitled works that prioritise geometry.
This is a comprehensive show of Wang’s unique practice, one that is fundamentally concerned with abstraction, but abstraction of time rather than figurative representation.
Wang Guangle (b. 1976, Songxi, Fujian, China) trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, where he graduated in 2000 and was awarded the Director’s Prize.
Wang has had 5 solo exhibitions and has participated in nearly 80 group exhibitions. He is a member of N12, a group of twelve Central Academy of Fine Arts graduates that began staging exhibitions together in 2003.
Until 16 April 2016 at PACE London, 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3ET www.pacegallery.com
SARAH BOLWELL
