People Around Us will showcase two major oil paintings and a number of smaller works by young local artist Wang Dawei. This, his most recent body of work, explores the transformation in individuality forced upon us by industrialization and the so-called ‘Civilization of the Modern City’. Lacking spiritual thinking and individuality these veiled social problems are revealed to the viewer, just as the dense smoke in Wang Dawei's paintings partially obscure then actually reveal his doubts and fears; it is definitely a solitary journey.
Wang Dawei was born in the mid 1980s and grew up in the 1990s, mirroring the change from a passionate literary era to one of commercial economy and the pursuit of material possessions. Everything is labeled by price. People judge value of everything by price. The artist is exploring the human condition of modern people in our time. The sudden clash of a material culture has caused confusion and loss of spiritual meaning.
Movies in Memory and Contemporary Sights (600 x 138cm 2009) This work exhibits a sense of foreboding, the deep blue sea dominates enhanced with the moon appearing to be gradually submerged by billowing industrial smoke. People are swimming forward in the boundless ocean in the dark night without any apparent end purpose other than the pursuit of the iconic products of modern civilization floating alongside them, automobiles, vehicles, airplanes... fear and anxiety are revealed vividly through the artist’s paintbrush. Faith and value are floating further and further away from us. The painting by Piet Mondrian that symbolized philosophical thinking is submerged in the water. The Latin cross in the right of the painting is floating away from the people; the effort of the angel in the sky is in vain. People are swimming onwards, forward without any aim in the endless ocean in the dark.
In A Free State（214 x 371 cm 2011）is the artists latest work painted on a large scale with 60 painting blocks put together into one work. The focal point is a gathering of people with an industrialized city and scattered ruins as the background while chimneys, skyscrapers, and industrial smoke almost cover the sky and moonlight. The crowd in the middle of the scene is looking straight at the viewer with a numb and expressionless face. Virtually staring at us like a mirror reflecting the living condition of modern people. The characters in the scene are sitting next to each other and appear to be breathing out the same smoke as the industrial emissions, the closeness of their bodies cannot hide their isolation. The freedom supposedly brought by modern development is illusory the collective desire for material goods proving the freedom in theory doesn't solve the imprisonment in reality.
Wang Dawei was born in 1984 in Shanghai, graduated from Shanghai Normal University Fine Art College with a BA degree. He has attended a lot of exhibitions such as Monologue at FQ Projects gallery (2010), Animamix Biennial 2009-2010 at MoCA Shanghai (2009), New Graduate art show at FQ Projects gallery (2009), Art Graduation Exhibition for Shanghai Normal University students (2009) and Art Graduation Exhibition at DeJia Space (2009).
