Capsule Shanghai is honored to announce ‘Meaning’, artist Wang Zhiyi’s first solo exhibition in Shanghai, curated by Shen Qianshi. On view from May 12 to June 11, 2018, the exhibition features a selection of the artist’s paintings completed in the past five years, as well as site-specific sculptures and installations.
The exhibition starts in the courtyard before assembling in the gallery interiors; here the artist has deliberately reduced the size of the doors in the exhibition space, prompting the viewer to observe a torqued relationship between the body and the psychological sense of scale. In his practice, Wang Zhiyi seemingly lays the frame on the ground, treating the canvas as a point of reference while the work unfolds three dimensionally: chunks of color spread from the sides of the canvas reaching progressively the surface, eventually shaped as fractal planes. The artist attempts to reproduce and magnify this approach in a gallery space of a scale similar to his own studio, by resetting the interaction between his finished works and the space. This reflects the process behind his abstract painting and initiates a painstaking investigation — an interrogation of ‘how to create meaning’.
The artist draws on human craftsmanship and simulates an artificial process of growing grass: an isolated area on the gallery lawn is replaced with etched metal sticks juxtaposing the natural surroundings. Additionally, a metal structure balances in the courtyard imitating animals sneaking listlessly across the garden.
Central concepts like body, space, and sensations are superimposed and modified, further augmented by Wang Zhiyi’s ability to interpret space and color. Several of these narratives ultimately inspire an alchemical creative process, as they perform the dismantling and reconstruction of the existing exhibition space.
Wang Zhiyi was born in Hubei, China in 1991. In 2014, he graduated from the Mural and Complex Material Painting Department of the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. He now lives and works in Wuhan. His creative practice spans painting, installation, mural, sound, photography and other synthetic media. The artist focuses on symbolism and the implications of color and graphics in perception, exploring the relationships between human psychology and image, sound and text. Selected solo includes: ‘Meaning’, Capsule Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2018); ‘Painting is Pleasure’, C5 Art Center, Beijing, China (2016). He has participated in the following group shows: ‘Refocusing’, Fine Arts Literature Art Center, Wuhan, China (2017); ‘Abstract Q&A’, Star Gallery, Beijing, China (2016); ‘The Boundaries of Order’, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2015); ‘Soft Abstraction as Constellation’, UCCA, Beijing, China (2014), etc.
Shen Qianshi graduated from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. He organized the "RS_PROJECTS" with Chen Ran in 2013. Recent curatorial exhibitions and projects include: "Chen Tingting: Low Fever" (2017), North Yujia Mountain, Wuhan, China; "Pillow: Pan Chennong" (2017), City Lights Book Store, Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, USA; "Xiong Chang: Embers" (2017), No.77 Dongting Street, Wuhan, China; "Li Dapeng: Black Hole" (2016), K11 Wuhan Art Village, Wuhan, China.
