回头 Look Back，2023，影像，彩色
‘Look Back’ (2023), loops footage of a Mongolian bull in the outskirts of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia and Wang’s hometown, seen from the main highway. The plain directness of the motionless bull as an agrarian symbol for the politically charged landscape of Inner Mongolia, being defined by Han Chinese as well as Mongolian cultures, delivers a monument of stability and local identify.
《回头》（2023）循环播放了从内蒙古呼和浩特郊区主干道上俯瞰一头蒙古公牛的镜头。这头停驻的公牛朴素直接，象征着内蒙古独特的政治面貌，由汉族和蒙古族文化共同定义，提供了一个稳定和地方认同的纪念碑形象。
洗牛者 Bull Washer，2024，影像，彩色，音频
Through the video work ‘Bull Washer’ (2024), the act of erasure is explored through performative painterly gestures of a brush wiping the snow from the walls at Teufelsberg in Berlin. The site of Teufelsberg is a non-natural hill created in the twenty years following the end of the Second World War, consisting of rubble moved from the destroyed buildings of West Berlin. The site itself is unique in Germany as the rubble covers the incomplete construction of a Nazi military college designed by Albert Speer which the allies were unable to destroy with explosives and thus chose to cover with the debris. The video sequences the alternation between aggressive sweeping of snow from the main walls to unveil its underlying structures, contrasted by the intimate stillness in the woods and the gentle movements of taking off layers of snow from frozen blossoms and twigs nearby.
视频作品 《洗牛者》（2024）中，人们可以通过艺术家擦拭柏林魔鬼山（Teufelsberg）墙壁上积雪的表演性绘画，探索这种”擦除”行为。魔鬼山是在第二次世界大战结束后的二十年里由西柏林被毁建筑的瓦砾堆砌而成的一座非自然山丘。该遗址本身在德国是独一无二的，因为这些瓦砾覆盖着阿尔伯特·施佩尔（Albert Speer）设计的纳粹军事学院的未完工建筑，盟军无法用炸药摧毁该建筑，因此选择用瓦砾覆盖。这段视频交替记录了从主墙上猛烈扫雪以揭开其底层结构的过程，与之形成鲜明对比的是树林中亲密无间的静谧，以及从附近冰冻的花朵和树枝上取下层层积雪的轻柔动作。
王凯凡 KAIFAN WANG
萨尔茨堡洗牛者 Bull Washer
COMMUNE 画廊
2024年2月29日 – 2024年4月5日
Daniel Lippitsch & Abby McKenzie / 策展人
王凯凡工作室 / 翻译
Kaifan Wang’s chosen title for his first exhibition in Austria – Bull Washer – derives from the legend which supposedly took place during an ancient siege of Salzburg in which the people pretended not to suffer from starvation by painting a bull in different colours to prove an abundance of supplies. However, the main relation is the aspect of the later washing of the bull in the river as a gentle gesture of protection, gratitude and recreation. Through this, Wang’s paintings and videos focus on the thematical approach of erasure and the application of these elements within two differentiating cultural boundaries.
The most direct relation to the titular tale is the video Look Back (2023), which endlessly loops a Mongolian bull in the outskirts of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia and Wang’s hometown, seen from the main highway. The plain directness of the motionless bull as an agrarian symbol for the politically charged landscape of Inner Mongolia, being defined by Han Chinese as well as Mongolian cultures, delivers a monument of stability and local identify. This stands in contrast to the video Bull Washer (2024), where the act of erasure is explored through performative painterly gestures of a brush wiping the snow from the walls at Teufelsberg in Berlin. The site of Teufelsberg is a non-natural hill created in the twenty years following the end of the Second World War, consisting of rubble moved from the destroyed buildings of West Berlin. The site itself is unique in Germany as the rubble covers the incomplete construction of a Nazi military college designed by Albert Speer which the allies were unable to destroy with explosives and thus chose to cover with the debris. The video sequences the alternation between aggressive sweeping of snow from the main walls to unveil its underlying structures, contrasted by the intimate stillness in the woods and the gentle movements of taking off layers of snow from frozen blossoms and twigs nearby.
These elements of historical and cultural effacing and the dichotomy between the aggressive components with a gentler erosive act of erasure are key to the thematic and technical aspects of Wang’s painting practice. The gestural movements from which the layers of paint are composed upon the canvas are then left to dry and scratched from the surface, creating a process of removal that retains an echo of the previous action and colour. The compositions seem to wander and aim for an exterior position outside the limitation of the image and the dripping effects add to the fluidity of the historical references and aspects of time that mutates and abstracts.
The contradictions within the emotive gestures lead into a dialogue between the traditions of abstraction within Western and Chinese painterly techniques. In this regard, Wang is interested in the violent and dominant movements that have a prevalence within the western canon of abstract painting with bold colour fields applied as if with force. However, simultaneously the works possess an aqueous quality that feels bequeathed from the traditions of Chinese ink painting, with a flowing constitution moving through the dilution of colour across the strokes of paint. The integration of these aspects and the interrogation of the duality of their cultural signifiers and displacements, ultimately encapsulates the essence of Wang’s practice, through the tender exploration of both his own cultural identity and a wider interest in the manner through which we construct and erase ancestral histories.
王凯凡为他在奥地利的首次个展选择的标题为《洗牛者》— 源自一个传说，据说发生在古代萨尔茨堡（Salzburg）被战争围困期间，人们为了假装没有挨饿，把一头公牛涂成不同的颜色，以证明有充足的食物和补给品。然而之后主要的关系在于人们将公牛放入河中清洗，以示对其保护、感激和游乐的温和姿态。通过这个主题，王的油画和视频作品聚焦于“擦除”的这一概念，以及这些元素在两种不同文化界限中的体现。
2024年2月，维也纳