U Gallery | Wang Yawei Exhibition

In 2013, I first met Wang Yawei. I saw a suite of works at the Surge Art Event, 

a series of portraits which attracted me strongly. I bought them with a lot of 

curiosity for the artist. Luckily, they were not signed, which gave me the reason 

to request the contact details of the artist. I encountered Yawei and we had a very

 interesting conversation about his work and I learned about his much broader horizon 

of artistic expressions, sometimes even a bit kinky, frivolous at the beginning, but in the

 last years becoming much deeper in thought and expression. 

He is not seeking for the beauty, but for the “truth” at he sees it. 

Poems is a sequence of works in small size, they convey a feeling of serenity and peace. 

Wang Yawei took 300 Tang Poems as a reference and converted in his imagination 

the written words into very light-colored visual elegies. I particular like the scenes during

the night, as the light which outflows the small depictions is astonishing. His most recent work 

found a simplicity, sometimes a minimalistic touch of personal expressions, which is unique in

the Chinese ink painting you see nowadays. Certainly not falling into the minimalistic impression

however is the main piece of the exhibition “Subway”, which is a sequence of a work he created 

in 2015, a beautiful row of city dwellers riding the subway (it is, among other of his works, in the

collection of Dr. Geoff Raby AO – which is now donated in total to the La Trobe Art Institute in Melbourne)     

Below are the sample of his works.

I asked him to do a sequence, considering a busier time, everyone’s fingers twitching over their 

smart phones extracting the newest news or gossip. His resolve was wonderfully astonishing for

me. Everyone who ever took the Beijing subway during busy hours will recognize the views immediately. 

After our first meeting in 2013, it took me 3 years to curate his first solor show at the CCD Showroom, 

 it took me another 3 years to be able to curate his second Solo Show “ Illusion & Flame”, which I am

very happy to show in the rooms of U Gallery. I am looking with great anticipation towards future 

cooperation with Wang Yawei, as I see a very interesting road ahead of him. 

For more information, visit u-gallery.cn/wang-yawei