After ongoing exploration in painting for a couple of years, in 2006, I began to devote myself to the tentative idea of abstract painting and installation art.

The exhibition at White Box Art Center demonstrates for the first time my abstract paintings and installation works. This time, I choose the works themed with power, lust and death. I like to keep things simple and straightforward. But you would naturally have your own judgement on how circuitous the thinking is and how deep the connotation is.

When choosing the materials for these works, I favored gold. In my opinion, the artist's understanding of the characteristics of materials mirrors his aesthetic concept of the works. The materials, as flesh is to the blood, are the carrier of the soul of art. Although bronze is commonly used in sculpture and installations while gold for its high cost has not been widely used by artists in the creation, the material of gold could embody to the most my awareness of the theme of the exhibition, power, lust and death. Gold symbolizes eternity, power, wealth, and so on. It troubles the human and has always fettered the fate of the human for thousands of years. There are numerous stories since ancient times about gold, most of which talks about the passion and adventure, often extremely magical and fascinating, but the heavy fact is that people’s greed of gold had been leading to continuous war and death.

In addition to gold, other important materials for these works are ceramic, white marble and bronze. They are similar to gold; all are or have been a symbol of rank, power and wealth. I use these materials to express my way of understanding of the life, the society and the world. They reflect my ambivalent attitude to the social reality of the moment: on the one hand I am extremely idealistic, full of fantasy and hope toward life, while on the other hand in the face of the real world, I have to tell myself to accept all the facts different from my envision and in this way I can make continued progress. Among the exhibits, the fragile ceramic and white marble make contrast and contradict to the solid bronze and gold, which is the very concern of me. I think it is from this contrast and contradiction that we learn to introspect and that reform has being born in the history of mankind time after time.

He Wenjue

Oct. 2015