Born in 1949, Wang Keping is one of China's pioneering artists. He was a member of the experimental group of artists « The Stars » (Xing Xing) that formed in 1979, breaking with China's propaganda art and setting the stage for avant-garde art in China. Wang's unique wooden sculptures, including one that featured a Buddha like Mao figure, shocked the art world in Beijing. He moved to Paris at 1984.
Today Wang lives in Paris and continues to work in wood. His figures are of a powerful vividness although they also have a touch of melancholy. A lot of them show strangely torn, twisted and distorted shapes. Some seem to have lost limbs, lack eyes or mouths or have over-dimensional genitals. In one string of his work, Wang is particularly interested in exploring and negotiating the possibilities of how to artistically render the female body. Visually informed by an amalgam of prehistoric ice-age statuettes and 20th century artists like Constantin Brancusi he carves heavy thighs, enormous breasts and big butts. But there are also restrained and subtly abstracted forms like Masque or Totem.
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