On the occasion of the release of his latest monograph published by Flammarion, meet Wang Keping at the bookstore Le Phénix in Paris on Saturday, February 12 at 5pm.
Editions Flammarion is devoting an important monograph to Wang Keping in which curator Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan and artist Ai Weiwei retrace the artistic career of the artist who was a founding member of the "Star Movement" in 1979 before becoming the author of a body of work now recognized as a major contribution to contemporary sculpture.
Among the Chinese artists expatriated to France and the United States in the 1980s, the sculptor Wang Keping stands out for the invention of a singular sculptural language that is now internationally recognized.
In this monograph, which highlights the monumental works of his maturity, art historian Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan analyzes this repertoire of signs within which the universality of motifs meets a dazzling variety of forms, infinite variations on femininity, animality, the couple, desire, suffering and finitude. Born of a sensual marriage between nature and style, the generosity of wood and the authority of the hand, Wang Keping's work embodies the quest for truth of an artist with an extraordinary destiny. A founding member of the first Chinese avant-garde group, the "Star Movement", and a political exile, Wang Keping chose to follow the tenuous path of a radical essentialization of forms upon his arrival in France, in the tradition of such diverse masters as artists, filmmakers and writers as Qi Baishi, Picasso, Matisse, Chaplin, Beckett, Zadkine and Brancusi.
The visual artist and activist Ai Weiwei pays him a vibrant tribute, testifying to his admiration for the audacity of his elder brother at the time of the dissident exhibition of the Stars in 1979 and celebrating the autonomy and integrity of the creation of the one nicknamed "The Master of Wood".
***
Saturday February 12 at 5 pm
Librairie Le Phénix,
72 boulevard de Sébastopol
75003 PARIS - FRANCE
