Art Gallery

FOUR years ago, Wang Peng participated in The Century and Women art exhibition at the China Art Gallery in Beijing, with a series of sculptures that reflect the course of the life of a woman. She was a student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts at the time, and at the last moment was entered, as an exception, into the list of participating artists.

This was the first time that Wang Peng's female-motif works had been exhibited at a major exhibition, and it established her position within Chinese sculptural circles and determined her artistic road in the following years.

Wet Face, Woman and Chair, and Afternoon comprise the series that was exhibited. These works depict three phases of life: childhood, youth and old age. In Wet Face, the image of a baby looks fretful and weepy, and the chaotic background indicates its poor living conditions, evoking anxiety about the fate of this young life.

Woman and Chair represents the aloofness and perplexity of a young woman, yet the elongated body and high back of the chair create simultaneously a goddess-like solemnity and a glimpse of the splendor of life.

Afternoon depicts the weakness and helplessness of life in old age through the images of a group of old women. This work seems almost like a sigh vented by the artist over the "destruction of beauty."

This trilogy of life shows that Wang Peng had developed an artistic style of her own by the age of 26. Her works state her concern about life: how time leaves its mark on the course of every life, and her fascination for and exploration into its secrets.

The year 1998 saw the heyday of Wang Peng's female-motif creation. Propelled by the success of Woman and Chair, she produced more thematic bronze sculptures of young women, such as Running, Drunken Woman, Wind, and A Ray of Sunshine, interpreting from an artist's perspective the state of her sisters under different circumstances.

Later she continued in this style and created Looking Back, Mother, Rag Doll, and A Bird in Captivity, expressing the more complex living conditions of modern women.

To Wang Peng, young women of today manifest freedom and romance, but at the same time they are oppressed by social and familial burdens. They can neither resist material temptations nor escape from spiritual perplexity. The change in their fate renders them at some times cosseted and at others desolate.

Recently Wang Peng embarked on a still deeper exploration into life, rather than simple expressions of its joys and sorrows. Although she no longer confines her motif to women, she still sees and interprets her concepts from a woman's perspective.