Kunzhao Wang
Island of Solitude

Kunzhao Wang’s sculptures usually depict humans in a state of despair, exhaustion, and suffering. The subject that the artist seems to be most fascinated with is the disparity between the outward and the inward. It suggests a kind of rebellion more common to very young people refusing to conform to the society’s expectations. Thus the sculptor apparently challenges the prevailing notion of humans as social animals.

The vision of an animal straining to break loose recurring throughout Wang’s oeuvre is no mere coincidence, but a graphic vision of a passionate obsession. Within the artist’s figurative language, any imposed compromise, any settlement with one’s consciousness is manifested by a deformity. According to Kunzhao’s concept, something along these lines is happening deep inside our contemporaries’ souls. While the spirit of an average city dweller is pining inside the electrically lit cage, tearing its way out is the totem animal of suppressed nature. Abiding by a certain inner discipline, Kunzhao Wang’s characters make every effort to ‘save face.’ That said, this is definitely not a distressing dystopian vision of an individual facing the soulless machinery of the state. Quite the contrary, the unassuming individual can be rather comfortable within the well-structured and overly rational big city life offering a publicly beneficial function to everyone.

The sculptor depicts people of spiritual greatness – formerly referred to as ‘awakened’ and now, increasingly more often, as ‘being in therapy.’ Finding themselves amid a semblance of the most common nightmare, they feel naked standing in the middle of some bustling square or taking a test in an overcrowded lecture room. Their bodies are distorted by the convulsions of painful shame. Nevertheless, they have ventured to get to the very bottom of such states and share their insights with the world. Hence the all-pervasive symbolism of a mirror, allowing the viewers to appreciate the figures from all angles, and simultaneously see their own reflections. Confusion, lack of confidence, and fear are fully natural human states that need not be endlessly blocked by entertaining content. The joy of discovering uncharted depths in one’s own soul is within everyone’s reach: all it takes is to shift the focus of attention and approach the task of reaching harmony with the world in all earnestness.

Perhaps the artist’s nearest creative milestone will see his protagonists reborn as immaculate beings akin to the Ancient Greek gods. It is more likely, however, that these emaciated and elongated bodies harbour dragons waiting to wipe off the hateful concrete jungle with their flaming tails and head off into a volcanic vent or ocean depths.