Meaning
Casule Shanghai
Capsule Shanghai is honored to announce ‘Meaning’, artist Wang Zhiyi’s first solo exhibition in Shanghai, curated by Shen Qianshi. On view from May 12 to June 11, 2018, the exhibition features a selection of the artist’s paintings completed in the past five years, as well as site-specific sculptures and installations.
The exhibition starts in the courtyard before assembling in the gallery interiors; here the artist has deliberately reduced the size of the doors in the exhibition space, prompting the viewer to observe a torqued relationship between the body and the psychological sense of scale.
In his practice, Wang Zhiyi seemingly lays the frame on the ground, treating the canvas as a point of reference while the work unfolds three dimensionally: chunks of color spread from the sides of the canvas reaching progressively the surface, eventually shaped as fractal planes. The artist attempts to reproduce and magnify this approach in a gallery space of a scale similar to his own studio, by resetting the interaction between his finished works and the space. This reflects the process behind his abstract painting and initiates a painstaking investigation — an interrogation of ‘how to create meaning’.
The artist draws on human craftsmanship and simulates an artificial process of growing grass: an isolated area on the gallery lawn is replaced with etched metal sticks juxtaposing the natural surroundings. Additionally, a metal structure balances in the courtyard imitating animals sneaking listlessly across the garden.
Central concepts like body, space, and sensations are superimposed and modified, further augmented by Wang Zhiyi’s ability to interpret space and color. Several of these narratives ultimately inspire an alchemical creative process, as they perform the dismantling and reconstruction of the existing exhibition space.
