Duel – Wang Yuyang. Fireflies for lanterns

The Chinese artist Wang Yuyang (Harbin, 1979), in his first solo show in Europe, is the protagonist of the sixth appointment of the duel cycle, conceived by the artistic director of the Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti, which sees guest curators called from time to time to collaborate with artists active on the international scene to create site-specific interventions inspired by the museum’s collection.

Morandi’s work was identified by Wang for the analogies with his own research on the illusion of objectivity and on the balance between abstract and figurative image, as well as to remember the years of his training, when the young artist studied and reproduced the works of the Bolognese master in the classrooms of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in China, where he is now professor of experimental art.

The artist himself describes his interest in science and new technologies: “My Moon paintings – explains Yuyang – are the faithful copy of the images produced by space agencies, characterized by various shades of gray. To make them, I first wear a pair of digital glasses that allow me to see everything in black and white; later I start to paint by choosing oil colors from a palette on which I previously deleted the name of the various colors. Consequently, at the end of the process, all the colors we see on the canvas are juxtaposed randomly, the final image corresponds to the color that the Moon could have in another space. However, if the public looks at the colored painting using the screen of their smartphone in black and white mode, it is as if it immediately returned to our reality”.