Wang Guangyi (b. 1956) is best known for his work that explores the Chinese Cultural Revolution through the lenses of propaganda. The Chinese artist knows how to marry a juxtaposing couple, politics with commercial ingenuity, which makes him an eminent figure of the "Political Pop" movement. Guangyi´s main work is “Great Criticism”, a series of paintings that explore commercial society and comment on the invasion operated by imported Western commodities on the traditional Chinese culture.

His oeuvre blends together the aesthetics of revolutionary images and consumer logos and becomes an unmistakable commentary on the narratives of political, economic, and social policies as well as an ideological criticism of globalization. While it is true that Western influence is a reality in contemporary Chinese art, it is equally true that Guangyi´s style keeps an instinctive distance from Western art, whose motives are incorporated while "Chinese". As an artist, he also felt himself to be entrusted with a mission: to bring his country on the international art scene - an ambition that soon made his name part of the history of contemporary Chinese art.

Wang Guangyi

Wang Guangyi repurposes historical Chinese propaganda into paintings that poke fun at the intersection of China’s communist history and the rise of Western influence.

"No Time" belongs to the set of twenty lithographs from "Wang Gaungyi´s Rhythmical Dichotomy ", which comes as a limited edition of 165 rare books. By combining depictions of workers with logos of famous commercial brands, such as Coca-Cola and Rolex (“corrections” of the political slogans he had painted as a youth), in this collection of lithographs Wang Guangyi weave intricate narratives, implicating the role of the artist as an active participant (both as subjugator and subservient) in economic and social policy.

Though Wang Guangyi’s work has erroneously been associated with Chinese Political Pop, in reality one of the main themes of his art can be found in its relationship to the transcendent. Juxtaposing revolutionary images with consumer logos, Wang’s canvases provocate with their duplicitous message, highlighting the conflict between China’s political past and commercialized present. Stylistically merging the government enforced aesthetic of agitprop with the kitsch sensibility of American pop, Guangyi’s work adopts the cold-war language of the 60s to ironically examine the contemporary polemics of globalization.

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“ I resolved that art must be passionate towards reality and that only this enthusiasm can develop academic issues in terms of society, history, and reality. „

—Wang Guangyi