On August 27, 2009 Chambers Fine Art Beijing is pleased to announce the opening of Things: New Works by Guo Hongwei. Born in Chongqing in 1982, Guo Hongwei graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2005 and has lived and worked in Beijing since then. This will be his first solo exhibition in China.
Once he left art school, he soon abandoned the traditional approach that characterized the teaching at the Academy. Favoring subject matter drawn from his childhood and often working from photographs in his family photo-album, during the next three years he painted a series of works that were notable for their inventive handling of the medium. Seeking to disturb the slick surface of the oil paint, he diluted it with turpentine and splashed it with water in order to create unanticipated effects. Beginning earlier this year, however, after a period of seclusion in Chongqing, he began to focus on more purely formal concerns, creating an inventive form of still-life from objects that he found lying around in his studio. The familiar forms of tooth-brushes, rolls of toilet-paper, a battered chair or a paper cup are isolated in the center of pristine white canvases or sheets of paper and continue the autobiographical approach while abandoning particular references to his childhood and adolescence.
Contrasting with the oil paintings is a series of large-scale water colors based on family photographs but rendered mysterious by their significant scale and dramatic chiaroscuro.
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalog with introductory essay by John Tancock.
北京前波画廊很荣幸于2009年8月27日起举办题为《东西——郭鸿蔚新作》的展览。郭鸿蔚出生于1982年，2004年毕业于四川美术学院，2005年起生活工作于北京。
郭鸿蔚从学校毕业后，很快放弃了学院气的传统工作方式，并以自己的家庭相册里那些老相片上自己和家人的图像作为工作对象，开始沉溺于以他童年记忆为主题的个人史式的绘画工作。此后的三年里，他创作了一系列因运用绘画介质的方法独特而显突出的作品。他力图消解工作过程中留下的可以作为风格标志的笔触，用松节油稀释画面，再泼上水使其产生斑驳的但却是自己亦不能控制的偶然效果。这种效果令绘画中的形象远离真实，似乎只存在于记忆的缝隙里。今年初，在成都的假期里，他开始重新思考他的工作，之后开始把目光集中于那些具有纯粹的形式感的主题——仅具躯壳的静物上，并以极具智慧却又没有私人感情的方式去观察，摆置和描绘那些躺在他工作室里没有知觉的东西。那些被搁置在画布或画纸上的，平凡的牙刷、卷筒纸、残破的课椅、一次性纸杯，被他从漠然的纯白背景中剥离了出来。他仍继续使用自传式作品时的某些特殊技法，仅仅只是在主题上搁下了那些煽情的童年。同时他也开始使用能产生奇异效果的上光油作为颜料稀释剂，这使他的作品在某些角度上看起来闪闪发亮。
另外，与郭鸿蔚新近的油画作品形成鲜明对比的是一组关于家庭相片的黑白水彩作品。这是之前油画工作的主题的一次隐性转换，从布面将其过渡到纸上。这套作品因其变化丰富的明暗效果和微妙细致的痕迹感引人入胜。
随展览一同出版了郭鸿蔚新作的图录，图录中附唐冠科先生所著的引言。