Lot 28: Wang Ziwei , B. 1963 The Leader (Lao Mao) acrylic on canvas

signed in Chinese and dated 9-92 ; signed and titled in Chinese on the reverse acrylic on canvas

45 5/8 by 60 1/4 in. 116 by 153 cm.

Hanart T Z Gallery, Hong Kong
Galerie Wild, Frankfurt

Wang Ziwei was born in Shanghai in 1963 and graduated from the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in 1983. His work was featured in numerous prestigious exhibitions, including the infamous "China/Avant-garde" at the National Art Museum in Beijing in 1989; the 45υth Venice Biennale in 1993 (the first presentation of Chinese contemporary art in that event); and "Mao: From Icon to Irony?The Cult of Mao Zedong from the mid-1940s to the 1990s" at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1999. One of the originators of the Political Pop movement in China, the artist began painting Mao's portrait as early as 1987. His style owes a considerable amount to cartooning with its flat forms, graphic clarity, and bright colors; his iconography is deliberately broad and ambiguous, with juxtaposed subject matter that is no less jarring than the profusion of colors in his palette.

Wang regularly deploys images of popular culture to witty, satirical ends, as in his large acrylic entitled Mao on Donald (1994), which presents an absurdly comic scene: Donald Duck rides an improbable large, spotted, pink rubber animal in shallow water; the whiskered dog Pluto wades in the surf before him, his rear end and upraised tail positioned towards the viewer, to whom the canine looks back in alarm. Small black speech bubbles are painted at regular intervals across the surface of the painting, each bearing one word taken from the odd question "Don't help me?" Next to each little black form is a miniature profile portrait of Chairman Mao, painted alternately in a bright green or pale red. The general point seems to be that Mao and Donald are both bankable icons, but the Great Leader is made ridiculous by comparison with the famous cartoon image and is reduced to an element in wallpaper-like décor. This enigmatic but quintessentially Pop composition, resonant with Roy Lichtenstein's work of the early 1960's, suggests the psychic and moral chaos of the newly commercialized China of the 1990's.

A 1992 portrait of a physically expansive Mao, called The Leader, shows him smiling, comfortably seated with his legs crossed on a crimson armchair or sofa. His features are painted in hues of pink and lilac with turquoise and blue shadows that compliment the color of his vibrant blue hair. Mao's figure divides the background of the upper part of the canvas into an orange-mustard at left and a violet at right. Mao's furniture fills the lower portion of the painting on either side of his ample figure. His broad right shoulder is flatly rendered as a turquoise form; his left in a bright green. A light violet shape at the bottom of the canvas just left of center denotes the leader's rounded posterior; the folds of fabric in his dark turquoise pants are highlighted by the lighter turquoise and bright green deployed above in his pink-collared jacket. While the nonchalant smiling figure dominates the center of the canvas and is obviously Chairman Mao, the would-be portrait has been reduced to an eye-pleasing color scheme of decorative patterns, rendering the leader fatuous rather than authoritative.

In 1995 Wang made Painting in Red and Yellow (Nude), in which a large-breasted young woman nonchalantly poses for the viewer, wearing only fishnet lingerie. While the title of the painting recalls those of American Pop artist Tom Wesselmann and the graphic style references Andy Warhol's silk screens, the imagery itself suggests the bombshell imagery of Mel Ramos. Big eyes, supple lips, and long hair streaked with yellow highlights that match the background accentuate the figure's overt sexuality; indeed, the bright red of the figure's body, intensified only at the lips and nipples, suggests the presence of pure carnal desire, framed by the striking contrast of black lingerie. The sexuality of the image could not be more blatant; the model's breasts dominate the center of the painting and compete with the whites of her eyes for the audience's attention. Wang's sharp sense of composition and broadly humorous style are here powerfully in evidence.

Less appreciated than his work deserves, the trio of paintings offered reveals the mind and talents of a fascinating, critically engaged artist whose unusual color language, stylistic vocabulary, and subject matter establish him as a significant presence in the development of Chinese contemporary art.