Curated by ZHANG Fang, this art exhibition will include six of WANG Qingsong’s representative photo works that depict the traumatic transformations that have taken place inside China. These photographs are inspired by China’s drive for globalization over the last few decades.

Please join us for the reception and Meet the Artist at 4 pm, January 24 at the Willis Ward Art Lounge.

About WANG Qingsong

An artist, educator, and curator, WANG Qingsong represents a generation of Chinese cultural producers and creative intellectuals who have exerted a profound influence on contemporary Chinese art practices. Wang’s large format photographic film works have been exhibited around the world at major museums, art centers, and galleries, playing a pivotal role in expanding the international art market for Chinese visual arts.

Formally trained as a painter, WANG Qingsong now works more like a film director who gathers dozens – sometimes even hundreds – of participants to produce improvisatory works that comment on consumerism, urbanization and social change. In 2014, Wang worked with University of Michigan faculty and students to create a large scale installation-photography work, one that has students perched along a thin stairway spanning the diagonal of a massive chalkboard, on which names of the top 500 institutions of higher education were written.

In winter 2018, Wang Qingsong will stage a new work that would stimulate comparative study of urban renewal efforts in China and the U.S. The work will feature photographic/film images of Detroit’s historical Chinatown and industrial-warehouses areas which have undergone urban renewal since the 1960s.

*Image: The Glory of Hope, 240x180cm, 2007, courtesy of the artist Wang Qingsong