Wang Ningde

Goedhuis Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by the Guanzhou artist Wang Ningde which explore bittersweet themes related to memory, history and the forces that combine to create our individual sense of reality. The figures in his series "Some Days" range from young schoolchildren to Communist soldiers, all captured in staged, surreal scenes that are by turns strangely comical, morbid, and unsettling.

Each of the "Some Days" photographs is cropped in a way that suggests it is but a part or detail of a bigger picture. The theme in each tableaux has a connection with the familiar yearnings and concerns of our lives: wedding dresses and family portraits speak of the longings and ambitions of adulthood, a table in a gambling house hints at the unpredictability of the future, a carriage in a train suggests the difficulty of knowing in which direction we are headed.

Furthermore all of Wang Ningde's subjects have their eyes closed and heads inclined to one side, or their backs are turned to their audience. Lost in their own thoughts, they seem similarly lost to us. This is the most often misinterpreted aspect of his work, which can be understood as a refusal to communicate with the audience. Yet, as Wang Ningde argues, those instances in which our eyes are closed are often when we are most profoundly and artlessly ourselves; when dreaming, in thought or in moments of extreme emotion.

"Some Days" serves as a meditation on the process of remembering and how it interplays with how we conceive of our present selves. This function of memory is particularly relevant to Wang Ningde's generation. For those born in the 1970's in Mainland China, memory carries a specific burden. To them, the past is shaded by a perception of great upheaval and change as China emerged from the Cultural Revolution into the modern world. Memory is not something that exists peacefully in the back of the mind, but is an actual and wily protagonist in the play of daily life.

Wang Ningde commenced "Some Days" in 1999, and it is the only work the artist has produced since then. The series now consists of thirty-five photographs. He says that every time he re-visits each of his photographs he finds different meanings within the images, as if the images have assumed a life of their own. He does not wish to control his audience by giving them instructions as to the meaning of each photograph – that would be missing the point. "Misunderstanding" can be valuable in art in that it can make the viewer think for himself, and in doing so achieve something that makes him move forward as a human being.
Wang Ningde is one of a brilliant generation of artists centered in Guanzhou who, because of the city's geographic location, were the first to experience the full impact of China's opening to the West. But he is the only one to have expressed change in such a poignant and subtle manner.

Wang Ningde currently lives and works in Guanzhou, Guangdong Province, China.