Untitled (Panda and Penguins)

Wang Xingwei is one of China's most thought-provoking contemporary artists. His boundless conceptual and stylistic experimentation has resulted in an impressive amount of stylistic variation and diversity spanning across his career. Since the year 2000, the visual resources that Wang Xingwei makes use of have become even more extensive, where photographs, illustrations, propaganda posters, decorative artworks, among many other objects have all come to influence his creative endeavours. In his work Untitled (Panda and Penguins) (Lot 129), two animals facing extinction-the panda and the penguin- have been placed in the same space, thereby presenting a contradiction between image and reality. With the panda and the penguin both being black and white in color and yet inhabiting completely different corners of the globe, it is as if the artist is lightheartedly asking us about the possibilities and impossibilities inherent in established facts. The artist's heavy brushstrokes wander across the traditional oil canvas, making the observer wonder whether the wind is blowing or whether it is the penguins who are advancing. The artist has delightfully combined events and objects to create both contradiction and novelty, making the observer's thoughts linger on this fantastically constructed piece.