Wang Qing (王顷)

Born in Henan in 1968, Wang Qing graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 1996. He’s now a lecturer at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings carry a sticky tone, grayish that mirrors the artist’s inner world.

Regarding your latest exhibition “Kaifeng Blues”, does “blues” refer to a depressive mental condition, or is it just a literary metaphor?

The exhibition includes my paintings from 2008 to 2016, but they are still just a small portion of my body of work. For several years, I was stuck in depression, but in general, it refers to a haunting mood of alienation that I feel about my surroundings.

Most of your paintings are on paper rather than canvas or another medium. Is that a deliberate choice?

I’m obsessed with paper, its texture, color, and even its smell. Painting on paper is an old habit. It’s more convenient compared to canvas, and its size is easier to manage. Among these paintings I used a smooth paper with a shiny glow. I found it by accident in Henan. It’s different to rice paper in that the color doesn’t show through, but leaves all traces on the surface. It’s thin, but it gives out a hallucinatory shine. Using Henan-produced paper to paint places in Henan is a very intimate feeling. I think it’s appropriate. The paper is like a context, but it is also part of the object that I’m depicting.

The Room, 2016

In the dark room at the exhibition, walls are covered in dream-like languages. Are those your dreams?

Over the last two years, I would wake up in the middle of the night halfway through my dreams, grab the phone by my pillow, type down the dream, and send it to my mailbox. When the curator Zhuzhu and I were creating this exhibition, we came up with this idea of writing something from me on the walls, and the only thing I’d written were those dreams, so I dug them up. I asked my 18-year-old daughter to write them down with chalk. She agreed because I paid her ten yuan to write each line. When she finished writing, however, she was very sad. She said to me, ‘Dad, I didn’t know that you were like this.’ It was a very emotional moment.

A Winter, 2014

How do you think your works fit into the larger context of globalization?

Most of my artworks originate not from big concepts, but from very private experiences, like an impression from an old movie that I’ve seen or a memory that I carry with me. More than once I have dreamed of a shabby street, and in these dreams it seems like a foreign country or Beijing. But, it is also obvious to me that it is Shangqiu or Kaifeng (both places in Henan). This, I think, is the power of ambiguity.

Cover image is A Tree On A Plain, 2010

“Dream a Little Dream” is a story from our issue, “Gender Equality”. To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine. Alternatively, you can purchase the digital version from the iTunes Store.