Object Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Wang, Jeffrey Chong |
Title |
Truth |
Accession # |
023.04 |
Date |
2011 |
Medium |
Painting |
Support |
Oil on Canvas |
Description |
Born in Beijing and living in Canada since 1999, Jeffrey Chong Wang creates work that is largely informed by his multifaceted cultural upbringing. His paintings juxtapose traditional Western oil painting techniques and art historical references with motifs from Asian culture. This juxtaposition acts as a mirror of his outlook and experiences. Chong Wang states that although Early Renaissance and North Renaissance Art greatly influenced him, he is also influenced by visual cultures such as modern photography, films, Japanese prints, and Indian miniature paintings. In a 2020 Artforum review, Tatum Dooley notes that: "In each of Wang's multi-figured paintings, no one makes eye contact; everyone is preoccupied with their own thoughts, daydreaming inside dreamlike paintings. The compositions mimic baroque operas, the canvas serving as a stage. The work is unified by a consistent technique and color palette, yet each piece is heavy with information, a kaleidoscope of art-historical references: El Greco's elongated figures, the exposed thigh of a Balthus model, the tight formal arrangements of Indian miniatures, the green-hued skin tones of New Objectivity. But instead of featuring the mainly white bodies of Renaissance paintings, for example, Wang's canvases depict his family members and elements of his memories from a childhood in China-a diaspora inserted into an exclusive canon. The structure is Western, but the narrative is more complex." Jeffrey Chong Wang was born in Beijing in 1979 and moved to Toronto in 1999. He earned his BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2009. He has lived and studied in Florence, France and New York. Wang's work has been exhibited internationally since 2008, most extensively in Canada and China. |