YING JING XIANG SERIES

More from Human to Hero: Top designer shares secret of staying in vogue I think there should be another part that should look inward … into an inner world … a world that exists within us. That’s why I really want people to stand right in front of my sculpture, to face (it).” “I want my art to awaken the sensibility of each onlooker, to awaken his body, so that his body can experience the sculpture. But what matters to me is … the poignance of the expression.” “If you put a real person’s face next to it, you will see a lot of differences. She says she doesn’t use photographs or work from models: “It all comes from my head.”Īlthough her sculptures are strikingly lifelike, Xiang says she isn’t aiming for realism. But before that, I have to think for a long, long time … trying hard to convince myself.” “The actual work … I can complete it within a year or a year and a half. I’m gradually becoming more and more alien to this eraīut, she says, “the most challenging part of the whole creation is the initial thinking process,” something she describes as “painful,” even “torturing.” “Every time when I work on something, I would eat very little and sleep very little and become very, very thin.” The production phase is physically exhausting for Xiang. Xiang then uses clay to shape a form, from which a plaster mold is created, which she then paints. Typically, she draws a rough sketch with measurements marked in, which her assistants use as the basis for creating a steel framework.

YING JING XIANG SERIES

“Art is more the expression of your points of view, or whatever you want to express in the long process of your understanding – often it has a very long thread throughout.”Įvery three years, Xiang puts on a solo show containing series of works that represent a particular line of questioning, she says. “I don’t think art is like design, when one can have an inspiration here or an inspiration there.” In fact, she rejects the notion of inspiration altogether. “He had created an emotional state of human beings.”īut Xiang’s process is too personal to be inspired by anyone or anything else.

It was the first time she had seen sculpture that wasn’t a politically-freighted monument or memorial, she says. One of the first artists to make an impression on her was Tian Shixin, a sculptor from Guizhou whose work Xiang first saw when she was at high school. Raised in Beijing by an editor and film studio director, Xiang studied at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1995. The deeper you go, you move further away from gender, but you get closer to human nature More from Human to Hero: From builder to Pritzker-winning architect However, as we’re collective animals, social animals, we all end up in a kind of a relationship … I think we’re like two neighboring islands, gradually getting close to each other.” “Individuals are in fact very alien, very distant to each other. More than gender politics, she is interested in human relationships. In other words, the deeper you go, you move further away from gender but you get closer to human nature.” Her sculptures of women, for instance, are an attempt “to deal with everything that had to do with female existence.”īut, she says, “after a while, if you work on a deeper level, you will discover that whether male or female, you’re ultimately dealing with human nature. “I think art is possibly one of the ways, one of the channels, to help us to find out certain truths,” she says. “From the day we are born, we have many, many questions – all kinds of questions from what we see, what we experience and what we know. Xiang says her work is always a kind of ongoing philosophical inquiry.Įvery time I work on something, I eat very little and sleep very little and become very, very thin According to curator and critic Lilly Wei, Xiang’s “sense of social satire is anchored in the commonplace, in the daily exigencies and social exchanges of an ordinary woman’s life, in the small vanities, frauds and violations.” The effect of Xiang’s work is often disquieting, even though her figures are recognizable.

A seated, slouching and vacant-eyed nude woman with a scar on her abdomen, sagging breasts and fat rolls, critic Gao Shiming, a dean at the China Academy of Art, has described the work as an expression of “ fatigue … emptiness and helplessness.” “Your Body,” a 2.6-meter-high fiberglass sculpture made in 2005 was collected by the Saatchi Gallery.

Ying jing xiang