PU YINGWEI A STUDY IN SCARLET:THE RE-ORIGIN OF REVOLUTIONARY REALISM
Residency: 10.08–01.10.2021Exhibition: 02.10.2021–13.11.2021 MAMOTH, London
In 2021, Artist Pu Yingwei (b.1989, China) inaugurated MAMOTH’s residency programme by creating an all-encompassing, site-specific environment. Between August and October 2021, a portion of the gallery turned into Yingwei’s studio and thereafter hosted the show “A Study in Scarlet: The Re-Origin of Revolutionary Realism” (2 October - 13 November 2021).
The residency offered Pu Yingweii an opportunity to further develop his artistic ideas and allowed him to explore contemporary Chinese society in its political entanglements with other countries, as well as his own personal identity. Yingwei’s video work “Dam Theatre: I want to be modern” (2020-2021), for instance, features clips received by his uncle, who is an engineer working between Kenya and China. The video hints at issues of contemporary geopolitical imbalances and neo-colonisation across these two countries, studying how economic power lies within everyday life and questioning the individual’s participation within this (im)balance.
Yingwei’s multidisciplinary approach within the residency and the exhibition aimed at re-thinking and re-interpreting China’s national agenda from multiple points of view, starting from the quintessential colour red. Invested in contemporary politics and social life, he designed a new typeface based on Chinese, Russian and English calligraphy, which appears on various works in the show, including “When the world becomes a plantation”. The painting reflects on the powers held by economic superpowers and their direct effect on human as well as environmental exploitation. Race, gender, social status, and the power of the media are all subject to scrutiny, and are keenly analysed to trace the heritage of Modern times and our own responsibilities as contemporaries.
About the artist: Pu Yingwei (b.1989) lives and works in Beijing, China. Pu received his BFA from Sichuan Fine art Institute in 2013, DNSEP (MFA with Félicitation du jury) from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2018.
As an active contributor to the new generation of political conceptual art, Pu Yingwei has creatively inherited and developed the visual and ideological lineage of socialist art and early Chinese avant-garde art, with his practice spanning painting, writing, designing, curating and lecturing.
His work has been involved in institutions such as Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), Nouvel Institut Franco-Chinois (Lyon), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), He Art Museum, OCAT Museums, Taikang Space. His work has been included in the 13th Shanghai Biennale and the Caen Film Festival. He was awarded the John Moore Painting Prize and his article "Empire’s Legacy" won the International Awards for Art Criticism Prize, and was selected for the Gen.T Asian Emerging Pioneers list.
As an active contributor to the new generation of political conceptual art, Pu Yingwei has creatively inherited and developed the visual and ideological lineage of socialist art and early Chinese avant-garde art, with his practice spanning painting, writing, designing, curating and lecturing.
His work has been involved in institutions such as Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), Nouvel Institut Franco-Chinois (Lyon), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), He Art Museum, OCAT Museums, Taikang Space. His work has been included in the 13th Shanghai Biennale and the Caen Film Festival. He was awarded the John Moore Painting Prize and his article "Empire’s Legacy" won the International Awards for Art Criticism Prize, and was selected for the Gen.T Asian Emerging Pioneers list.