Thursday, February 25, 2010

Chen Wenling

Chen Wenling and his Anticapitalist Sculpture

Posted by seville | seville | Thursday 25 February 2010 11:52 am

Today we will talk about the financial crisis, about the consumerism and about the materialism, but in a very peculiar way. Specifically, from the point of view of Mr. Chen Wenling, a magnificent avant-garde sculptor born in Fujian (China) in 1969.

Chen Wenling

This ironic artist uses Western references in his sculptures. The red colour is also very important in his works. As for example in Red Memory. One of the most impressive is the series “cool”, meaning cold.

One of his works is called “God of Materialism”, a fibreglass painted sculpture.
The pig appears in almost all of his works. You could say that it is the quintessential signature of Chen Wenling. He uses the pig as a representation of greed and everything that is mundane. It is very interesting because the pig is very special in China. Chinese people eat pig in their meals and he uses it as a metaphor of greed and selfishness.

Another impressive work is about capitalism. He calls it “What we see is not always true”. Here he replaces the pig for a bull. We can see this animal (which represents Wall Street) rising from the floor with the force of his own fart and crushed against a wall. It is assumed that it emulates one of the biggest crooks in the history, Benard Madoff, with devil horns included, who is currently in prison. The scam is valued at 50,000 million dollars.

With this exhibition he wants to express the hard moments of this financial crisis. He really wants to portray the reflection of the world in which we live in. And he does it in a large scale, to draw the maximum attention to all of us and to make us think of what is happening around us.

With his tradition of bulls and pigs, Chen Wenling exhibited his works in Spain (Seville), mostly at the Contemporary Art Museum, where he joined his iconography, in this case the bull with his political views against the capitalism. Seville, the Andalusian capital, is part of the capitalist Europe. If you want to know the city, rent Apartments in Seville and take a look at his work around the wonderful streets and iconography of Seville, where capitalism and tradition come together through the art.

Posted via web from barcedona's posterous

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