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Wei Minghui: Sketch

Beijing Headquarters Gallery Space

28 December, 2024 – 22 February, 2025

Curated by Fiona Lu & Huang Ying

Press

Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of ‘Sketch’, a solo exhibition by young artist Wei Minghui, on 28 December 2024 at 4:00pm at its Beijing Headquarters gallery space. Curated by Fiona Lu and Huang Ying, the exhibition features over ten of Wei Minghui’s latest creations.

 

What is a "sketch"? "Sketch" originally refers to short essays in literary genres, but the familiar sketches nowadays are miniature comedy performances. They are short and concise in form, and the themes are mostly selected from daily life. Wei Minghui's creations often place people, animals, and furniture in a surreal space, and the plot connections are as absurd and nonsensical as dreams. In this way, Wei Minghui's art seems to be loosely related to "sketch", as well as his creation does not start from this. The title of the exhibition actually comes from the artist's jokes and self-mockery.

 

Wei Minghui constantly creates orderly and disordered spatial games in the scenes: using surrounded regular tiles, he builds nested and cut-off alien space (Room, Bath Time), and the tangled charging cables cause small chaos (Before Rehearsal). The characters in the space wear limited clothes or are completely uncovered, and along with the clothes, the symbolic value and social identity attached to the body are stripped away. They move in this posture without shame, breaking the conventions and taboos. In this way, a sense of absurdity quietly arises. Compared with the characters, the animals in the works are more flexible and cunning, and can be said to be the punch line in the comedy effect. They lie down, flee, or squint in the picture, and the funniness seems to remind us that the essential difference between humans and animals is not that profound. The choice of these human bodies and animals is not intended to climb the allegorical sublimation, but rather comes from Wei Minghui's pursuit of painting instinct. The artist attaches great importance to the spontaneity and contingency in his creative process. The combination of images and the narrative triggered in his paintings are "unconsciously formed". This intuitive drive is consistent with his aesthetic requirements for composition, and together they present a harmonious and bizarre visual order.

 

The combination of surreal plots and organic images also comes from the artist's observation of current real life - this of course is not limited to the frequent presentation of the scenes of common life, indoor furnitures and toiletries. The characters depicted by Wei Minghui with stiff expressions and awkward movements are "non-heroic", they are ordinary people who lack "the skills and tools necessary to success". Those moments captured by the artist frankly reveal the limitations and vulnerability of the characters themselves - the laughters are generated by these shortcomings - their embarrassment of not being able to achieve their goals seems to be fate, and they have no choice. If the seriousness of real life comes from personal freedom and action, the way to dissolve it into comedy is "just imagine the hidden strings beneath the surface of freedom". The uncontrollable aspects of life swing people between action and stagnation, sincerity and fatigue. Wei Minghui makes the mechanical devices on the living body visible by magnifying and deforming the incoordination between the environment and the individual. The inner reality under its absurd surface is also the arbitrariness of the meaning of life.

 

Comedy and artistic creation establish a cognitive distance between themselves and the objects of expression, so that their understanding of the expressed objects exceeds the objects 's understanding of themselves. It must shape and transcend the material, not just reflect it. In this sense, its form is diaplaced with its content. What Wei Minghui did was to absorb the cleverness and humor of the sketch, while hollowing out its traditional restrictions and adding elements of black humor that are impolite, alien or grotesque. The artist's reflection and humor complete the initiation of another kind of thinking, achieving the effect of "lightness" through the dissolution of laughter - flattening and updating the perception of reality, and being just simple and true - which means risk, intervention, and self-exposure. Even if it seems absurd, it has the authenticity to prick the audience. Naturally, whether these subtle "sketches" are funny is a subjective feeling rather than an objective standard. Together with the artist, they try to invite the audience to enter a state of reversing conventional life with an open attitude, emphasizing the feeling of this reasonable absurdity and rejecting the limitations brought by over-interpretation and pursuit of answers.

Works

EXHIBITING WORKS

Bathroom Fantasy 2 Oil on wood frame 160 x 200 cm 2024

Drama Inside and Outside the Door 3 Oil on wood frame 160 x 180 cm 2024

Blind Men’s Bluff Oil on wood frame 180 x 70 cm 2024

The Death of Bull Oil on wood frame 120 x 240 cm 2024

Room for Sketching Oil on wood frame 100 x 200 cm 2024

Men and Fountain Oil on wood frame d: 80 cm 2024

Lost Evidence Oil on wood frame d: 100 cm 2024

The Scenery in the Attic Oil on wood frame 120 x 120 cm 2024

Shout Oil on wood frame 100 x 120 cm 2024

The Fight Oil on wood frame 100 x 120 cm 2024

Room Oil on wood frame 100 x 120 cm 2024

Bath Time Oil on wood frame 100 x 120 cm 2024

A Corner of the Football Field Oil on wood frame 100 x 120 cm 2024

The Dying Flock Oil on wood frame 80 x 120 cm 2024

Before Rehearsal Oil on wood frame 80 x 100 cm 2024

Chameleon Oil on relief 27 x 33 cm 2024

Stranded Person Oil on wood frame 80 x 120 cm 2024

Artist

ARTISTS

卫明辉个人照.JPG

Wei Minghui

b. 2000, China

Graduated from the Oil Painting Department at Henan Normal University in 2022.

 

Wei Minghui uses surrealism as his primary artistic language, capturing fleeting and contradictory timelines. His subjects navigate between nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, leading to a form of systemic humor that emerges from the mechanistic mundanity of daily life. Within this framework, all seemingly normal states become illusions that the artist must confront, ultimately seeking to reconnect with the initial impulses of life.

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