After seeing WANG Lei's work for the first time, I believe the audience will find it really interesting. His works are made out of books, newspapers, toilet papers etc. These daily materials seem so familiar but yet so strange, they allow the audience to view them freely but not use them as daily supplies. Then, what is the meaning of WANG Lei's work? Starting from Hand Woven, it seems that he's trying to find the common ground of the two different forms -paper and clothes. Later in his works, we could see a different way of the materials infecting each other. Both clothing and papers have their own use, but when they are combined they lose their own purpose. The result did not stop WANG Lei going further, he once again reformed the relationship between these two materials. In Knitted and "Zhi" Wu Bu Yan, he used The Grand Dictionary of Chinese Language and newspapers to present a history of word which cannot be read.
In Colorful Clothes and Si Tiao Ping, WANG uses one of the four treasures in the study- rice paper - to knit the uniform of the ancient Scholar-Bureaucrat. The colors of red, blue, green and yellow represent the four characteristics of an ancient gentlemen: proud, peaceful, humble and calm.
Wang created a wonderful melody of Hua Die, with the dance of his knitting skill and the color of rice paper. "The Conversion" has played out the process of an ancient Chinese philosophy of doubting and understanding the truth meaning of all. |
