622 Wei Jia (1975) Having completed his BA from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, Wei went on to graduate with a MFA from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania in 1987. He currently lives and works between New York and Beijing, where he teaches at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Having studied calligraphy at a young age, this medium has always been a major part of Wei's artistic practice. Choosing characters for their unique formal qualities, rather than their literal meanings, Wei explores how the forms interact with one another, and with the negative space around them. Wong Adrian (1980) Born in Chicago and graduated with a BA in Art History and MA in Developmental Psychology from Stanford University, Wong's Western upbringing sets him apart from other artists in dslcollection. Having moved back to Hong Kong in 2005, he now splits his time between Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Wong began exhibiting his works in San Francisco while completing his master's thesis on developmental psychology. Through a variety of media and subject matters (installations, sculptures and videos), Wong explores the intricacies of his relationship with the environment (culturally, experientially and historically), set within fictionalised contexts. Wong is the co-founder of Embassy Projects and currently teaches sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University. His recent exhibitions include the traveling exhibition “Troglodyte See the Light,” “A Passion for Creation” for the Louis Vuitton Fondation pour la Création, and the Hong Kong Sculpture Biennial. His videos have been screened internationally at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, LOOP Media Art Center, and Kunsthalle Wien. Wu Chi Tsung (1981) After 11 years of fine art education in painting and sculpture, Wu began experimenting with video in 2002. In his senior year at Taipei National University of Arts, he won the Taipei Arts Award and in 2006, he was nominated for the Arts Mundi Prize, the most lucrative prize in the international art world. Now at the age of 31, Wu's career path is representative of the entire younger generation of artists - artists who have been able to express themselves freely, having been exposed to more diverse influences. Over the past ten years, Wu has been invited to participate in more than 50 international exhibitions. Wu Hao (1985) The works of Wu Hao functions as a record of time compressed. In his ongoing series "Watermarks", Wu creates temporal paintings through the evaporation of a mixture of water and paint, leaving behind a residue of pigment. In a previous iteration "Watermark Project", these experiments were carried out in Wuhan, Shanghai and Hong Kong, revealing degradations of chromatic variation working in tandem with different conditions of weather, heat and humidity unique to these cities. Major group exhibitions include "On Curbstone Jewels and Cobblestones", Daimler Contemporary Berlin, Berlin (2015), "L'interieur du Geant", Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014), and "Our Land Our People", Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2012). Wu Shanzhuan (1960) Wu rose to prominence in the 1980s as a conceptual artist known for his experimental works with language, the use of big character posters and other textual pop references, a kind of precursor to Gu Wenda and Xu Bing, who are masters at toying with language and meaning. Wu’s pivotal 1986 installation, Red Humour International, laid the foundation for his highly idiosyncratic and sophisticated approach to painting, which forgoes image in favour of political jingoism, religious scripture, and advertising slogans. Wu’s canvases appear as a combination of graffiti and expressionism. Rendered with painterly spontaneity, words, symbols, and diagrams battle for space in a virtual terrain between conveyed meaning and pictorial abstraction. Wu continues to collaborate with Icelandic artist, Inga Thorsdottir, on a number of projects. Wu Yiming (1966) Wu's concern with individual identity is so astutely captured in his works that it would not be an overstatement to say that that he has found, within portraiture’s limits, the most adequate aesthetic style. A combination of individuality and anonymity informs his subtly poignant paintings. The figures depicted are presented as both intimate and mythic. The most significant feature of his characters is a paradoxical notion of blankness: his portraits lack facial features and any indication of individuality, alluding to an escape from or intrusion into an unwanted reality. Wu's works go well beyond a simple analogy to the present state of Chinese society, with its frenzied development accompanied by estrangement and identity-loss. Instead, the images suggest a strong engagement with themes of cultural amnesia. X Xiao Xu (1983) Xiao graduated with a MFA from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing in 2010. Currently living in Beijing, Xiao represents a generation of younger artists predisposed to explore the solitude and fantasy found in Chinese literati painting. Specialising in elaborate ink paintings that are filled with nostalgia and mystery, many of Xiao's paintings appear to be enshrouded in mist and fog, metaphors for the search of meaning and longing for another world. Xiao applies delicate layers of ink wash to his works, creating a semi-transparent depth into a dreamlike world. Xie Molin (1979) "A graduate of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, Xie has been experimenting with new methods of painting for over ten years. His focus is on expanding the visual possibilities of painting through innovative technology and materials. Following the mechanics of a cutting plotter, Xie invented his own painting machine, which traces and scrapes his uniquedesigned patterns onto thick layers of paint. Each of Xie's abstract paintings is executed with absolute precision and symmetry. The main characteristics of my painting are personal aesthetics and the accuracy of machine control. In this way, more focus is possible on the exploration of the depth and visual appeal of the painting. - Xie Molin" Xu Qu (1978) Xu graduated from Nanjing Art Institute in 2002 and completed a postgraduate program under Prof. John Armleder at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany. A member of the art collective, GUEST, Xu's solo career has also gone from strength to strength, with numerous exhibitions around the world. Xu's oeuvre is characterised by their physicality: for his highly acclaimed video work, "Upstream", Xu and a friend navigated a rubber dinghy along the canals in Beijing, ending near the central government's headquarters where they were stopped by the police. Such deliberate and symbolic action is a key method of expression in the artist's work. Xu Tan (1957) Xu’s work deals with the hidden motivations and intentions of individuals through a high-tech analysis of their vocabulary. “Searching with Keywords” is the New York leg of an ongoing project which the artist launched in 2005. It began with a series of interviews of different groups of people who are active in Chinese society: a first set of interviews were carried in the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, a sort of Silicon Valley near Shanghai, a second set covers different cities and people from all walks of life, from writers, to real estate developers, to Buddhist monks, to businessmen; and a third was conducted among the artistic community in China. The video interviews were then carefully analyzed, and Xu Tan has identified 100 keywords based on meaning (social values), frequency (repetition), sensitivity (political), and popularity (trendyness). These Keywords reveal much about the values and motivations of contemporary Chinese society, they give a pulse of the current social climate, and present an insight into the collective social consciousness of China. Xu Zhen (1977) Xu's art-making has crossed over various disciplines, from installation, photography, video to performance and painting. Executed with a critical intelligence, low-tech subtlety and often in forms of theatric pranks, Xu’s work focuses on human sensitivity (Rainbow, 1998; In Just a Blink of an Eye, 2005–07) and dramatizes the humdrum of urban living (ShanghArt Supermarket, 2007). His recent pieces have employed more provocative lexicons and social interventions so as to confront sociopolitical issues and taboos within the context of contemporary China.
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