Wang's unique wooden sculptures, including one that featured a Buddha-like Mao figure, shocked the art world in Beijing in the late 70s and early 80s. Wang continues to create these signature sculptures that juxtapose vivid emotion with a marked sense of introversion. Wang is particularly interested in exploring and negotiating the possibilities of rendering the female body. Visually informed by an amalgamation of prehistoric ice-age statuettes and 20th century artists like Constantin Brancusi, he carves heavy thighs, enormous breasts and bulbous buttocks. This eroticism is countered by the solitary tone of these sculptures, as stoic and as subtly abstracted, as is Totem. His figures are of a powerful vividness although they also have a touch of melancholy. Many of the pieces show strangely torn, twisted and distorted shapes. Some seem to have lost limbs, lack eyes or mouths or have over-dimensional genitals. But there are also restrained and subtly abstracted forms in the same vein as Masque or Totem.
He has also had numerous solo shows in major institutions around the world.
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
2010: Musée Zadkine, Paris
2008: He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China,
Musée Maillol, Paris, France, Groninger Museum,
Groningen, the Netherlands
2007: Museo d´Arte Contemporanea, Génova, Italy
2005: Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland
2004: Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France
2000: Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu, China
1998: Museum of Contemporary Art, Stuttgart, Germany
1997: National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
1993: Chinese Modern Art Center, Osaka, Japan
1989: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
1983: Brooklyn Museum, New York
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Aidekman Art Center, Boston, U.S.A.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom
Collection de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
International Sculpture Park, Pu-Yeo, South Korea
He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
Museum of Asian Contemporary Art, Fukuoka, Japan
Museum of Modern Art, Taizhong, Taiwan
The Olympic Sculpture Park, Seoul, South Korea
