Weng Yunpeng

Weng Yunpeng was born in 1964 in Jingdezhen China. He currently lives and works in Beijing and Shanghai.

He has always been interested in the Chinese contemporary visual experience and the paradoxes that exist within reality, and his work reflects a number of contemporary issues. In an era of images, what are we actually seeing and how are we seeing it  Weng cares about the “reality of seeing.” All of his work, from his oil paintings to his photography, are encompassed within his own system.

More than a decade ago, his oil paintings began to appear on TV, and he began to notice the optics of television appear in daily life and the various kinds of scenes that appeared on the television. His works come from the specific contexts of China, and so, in the context of globalization, the scenes in his work that are disappearing due to urbanization belong to the whole world.

Today, he has further focused his attention on the TV screen, a vehicle for the presentation of images and subtitles. Text and images seem connected yet divergent, and translation causes even greater divergences. Text and images both represent the world, and all the artist has to do is capture these “pictorial ready-mades.” Everything before our eyes clearly comes from reality, but do we know what is real and what is not? This question once again shakes the truth of reality. Weng Yunpeng rearranges “pictorial ready-mades” to create a new narrative that is almost rational. Even so, the possible arrangements are endless, but the uniqueness of the narrative is also suspect. However, can it be that our experiences with images in our daily lives are not being fragmented and reassembled in everyone’s minds?

Weng Yunpeng’s work compels us to follow his doubting gaze and reexamine the familiar world around us, but we also appreciate that his work is unified by his warmth and compassion.

www.wengyunpeng.com