Ginny on Frederick has just opened an exhibition of four new paintings by Kiki Xuebing Wang at The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ. We managed to have a quick chat with Kiki to talk about the exhibition.
Kiki you have had a number of solo exhibitions in China, USA and now London in the past few years. How are you feeling?
I feel fortunate to be able to show my work at a variety of locations, especially as my work develops over time.
What prompted the move away from focusing on luxury goods to more natural elements such as shells?
I am interested in the physique of a painting, so I view the object through dissecting it into color, texture and space more than specific categories. There’s a book by Robert Irwin called ‘Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees’, which is what I’ve been trying to do when I paint. Garments, butterfly wings, and shells share qualities in terms of texture and color, all sculptural in a sense.
The colors in your paintings are incredible and create a kind of material texture – how do you achieve this effect?
The colors are inspired by a book I got in New York called Sunset Cocktails, where it talks about color gradients in the beginning chapters. When I was reading this book, I had pictures of Monet’s Water Lilies paintings in my mind. So when I started this group of paintings for Ginny on Frederick, I intentionally picked the palette that you can see in those Waterlily paintings and tried to have the colors blending into each other. Instead of small, thin and wet brushstrokes, I wanted to create a translucent surface by building up multiple thin layers and sometimes smudging off each layer over and over again. A nice example of this process can be seen in the painting Marble Dessert.
How has it been working with Ginny on Frederick for this show at The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ?
It has been amazing working with Ginny on Fredrick. Freddie is very encouraging and supportive of artists. Unlike most working relationships with gallerists, it feels more like a friendship. It has been very easy and straightforward working together.
Could you tell us about what you have coming up next?
I have a solo coming up with Linseed Projects in Shanghai this June, where I hope to explore and expand on some of the themes seen here in Marble Dessert.
Who are the artists, historic or contemporary, that have been most influential in your work?
I used to look at a lot of paintings from the Bay Area Figurative Movement, painters like Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, when I was studying and living on the West Coast for a few years. It has taught me to look at a painting in a different way from its combination of figurative and abstraction both seen in the figurative paintings. I am also influenced by Impressionist painters such as Cezanne, Gauguin, and Manet. They capture momentary and essence without details.
Kiki Xuebing Wang, Marble Dessert, Jan 27th – Feb 18th The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, Presented by Ginny on Frederick
