The China Project

119 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection GUAN Wei Guan Wei worked as a high school art teacher in Beijing before moving to Australia in 1990. 1 Confronted by the experience of living in a very different culture, many of his works from this period address ideas of isolation, belonging and migration, and reveal the development of a sophisticated visual vocabulary at a time of personal and cultural upheaval and transformation. Born in Beijing in 1957, Guan Wei studied at the Department of Fine Arts in Beijing Capital University, graduating in 1986. Combining the influences of East and West, his work highlights an important era in art history, one that saw the opening of relations between China and the West, including Australia. In two lithographs from 1995, Guan Wei takes biblical subject matter and transposes his characteristic vertical composition into a horizontal composition, reminiscent of scroll painting. The last judgement 1995 shows small huddled figures and a threatening red sky with black, angry clouds. In 1994, Guan Wei visited Beijing and was shocked by the city’s pollution, leading to what he has referred to as ‘the environmental period’ in his practice. In the upper register of The last judgement , a bomb and loudspeakers suggest that ominous events are about to occur — the end of the world suggested by the title. The figures in the foreground play out their individual dramas, conveying intense feelings and relationships with simple gestures, and each is labelled with a number, suggesting their expendable nature. The last supper 1995 relates to Guan Wei’s 13-panel painting of the same title, also 1995, in which each panel depicts a figure and a symbolic object. In this work, the spiritually resonant space of the classical Christian subject is replaced by a space of reduced depth, in which each figure is ‘caught in an individuating pose’, isolated from his neighbour. 2 On the figures’ chests are small grids of punctures or dots, predictive elements borrowed from the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, which inserts a Chinese element into this Western subject matter. Guan Wei’s work Yellow fruit 1991 prefigures his Big allegory (from ‘Living specimen’ series) 1992 in its use of a narrow, vertical panel and its deployment of everyday objects to convey metaphoric meanings. Yellow fruit , with its stark palette of grey, blue and white, with the fruit and empty plate in the foreground providing a small element of colour, hints at hidden narratives. In this painting (possibly a self-portrait), the subject is poised, contemplating the fruit with a single eye. This single eye is significant because, ‘according to Taoist philosophy, only one eye need be trained on the external world, while an inner eye may focus on the interior self, uniting two kinds of vision in one individual, securing organic balance and harmony’. 3 The open space in this panel has since become characteristic of Guan Wei’s work. Guan Wei’s works from the early 1990s reveal the evolution of his artistic style, and his creation of a theatrical space in which gestures and symbols hint at deeper narratives and metaphors. In each work, past and present intermingle, allowing him to reflect on cultures, feelings, history, dreams and aspirations. They represent a unique opportunity to view this significant period in history through the eyes of a sophisticated, witty and observant artist. endnotes 1 Guan Wei’s migration to Australia was prompted by connections he made while living in Beijing, through people such as Nicholas Jose, who was the cultural attaché at the Australian Embassy. Guan Wei was invited to take up an artist residency in Hobart in 1989. He subsequently applied for Australian residency. 2 Bernice Murphy, ‘Fabulous engagements: Recent work by Guan Wei’, in Guan Wei [exhibition brochure], Sherman Galleries Goodhope, Sydney, 1995, unpaginated. 3 Murphy, unpaginated. opposite The last supper (detail and full image) 1995 Lithograph, AP, ed. 7/7 / 37 x 105.5cm / Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008 above Yellow fruit 1991 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 86.5 x 46cm / Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008