Artwork: Father and Sons
Artist: Wang Bing
Year: 2014
Media: Single-channel video (16:9, color, digital 4K)
Size: 87 min 11 sec
Edition: 6+2AP
Price: EUR 80,000
In Southwest China, a factory worker and his two adolescent sons live in a squalid shack with only one bed. Shot with a static camera framing the dwelling’s entire interior, most of the film consists of the elder sibling sprawled across the bed, his attention divided between his smartphone and the television set. Later his younger brother joins him. Toward the conclusion, the father finally comes home from work, and, after a few minutes, announces that it’s time for bed and turns the lights out. The end. “Nothing happens” is very much to the point of this film: The ponderous simplicity of the premise returns the viewer to the travails of thought, through which one might momentarily enter the frame, and renders abjection into beauty. Wang Bing never preaches or overtly politicizes his subjects or their existential situation, instead, his unvarnished capture of the protagonists’ life locks the gaze of the viewers. Wang’s empathy is unwavering; it magically becomes our own. The phone and the television – likely the most valuable possessions in the room, keep on reminding the Father and Son of the “outside world”. Only through these anesthetizing screens, can we catch a glimpse of the limited emotional expressions of the family.
Awards:
2014 Best International Competition Feature-Length Film, Doclisboa, Lisbon
2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam
2015 Jeonju International Film Festival
2017 Gloria-Kino, Wang Bing: Retrospective, documenta 14, Kassel
2018 Hito Steyerl, Ben Rivers, Wang Bing, EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
2021 Wang Bing: L’OEIL QUI MARCHE, Le Bal, Paris
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About the Artist
Wang Bing
WangBing was born in Xi’an, Shanxi Province in 1967. Now working and living in China and France.
In 1992, Wang Bing graduated from the Department of Photography of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, he had made detailed observations of the factory workers in Tiexi District for photography. In 1994, he started his photography in 1994. In 1995, he entered the Film Department of Beijing Film Academy. Before becoming an independent film director in 1998, he worked on TV in 1998. “West of Tracks” , Wang Bing’s first documentary, was shot in 2002 and won numerous awards.
In 2006, Wang Bing received the Knight of the Order of French Literature and Art. In 2009, Wang Bing held his first solo exhibition at the Santa Gallery in Paris, featuring two documentaries: “Hefengming” and “The Nameless”. Since then, Wang has produced many documentaries such as “Three Sisters” (2012), “De Ang” (2016), “Coal Money” (2016), and “Fang Xiuying” (2017) and “15 Hours” (2017), the latter two were exhibited in the Cassel Documentary in Athens and Cassel in 2017.
In 2014, Wang Bing held a solo exhibition of his photography at the Pompi Art Center in Paris, France, showing three groups of photography: “Father and Son”, “The Nameless”, and “Relics”.
In 2015, Wang Bing’s video work “Father and Son” was exhibited at the US Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).
In 2017, his work “Fang Xiuying” was awarded the Golden Leopard Award, the highest award at the Locano Film Festival in Switzerland.In the same year, he also won the EYE Art and Film Award in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for his entire creative journey.In the same year, as the only Chinese artist invited by Kassel, he held a review of personal works at the literature exhibition, as well as “West of Tracks” photography exhibition.
From 2018 to 2019, Wang Bing was a visiting artist professor and doctoral supervisor at the French National Academy of Contemporary Art.
Wang Bing won the CHANEL Next Prize Award in December 2021.
Wang’s major solo exhibitions include the Swiss Photography Centre (2022), the Le Bal Art Centre in Paris (2021), the Zurich Art Museum (2018-2019), the CCA Wortis Institute in San Francisco (2016), and the Pompidou Art Center in Paris (2014).In 2018, the National Art Centre of Queen Sofia and the Spanish Film Library in Madrid held him at the Tate Gallery in London in the same year.
He has participated in a number of exhibitions, including: Halford Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), Washington Textile Museum, D. C. (2020), Bowden College Art Museum (2019), Kassel Literature Exhibition (2017), Shenzhen Urban Architecture Biennale (2017), Brussels Steinbeck Cultural Center (2017), M O M Museum of Modern Art A (2015), Korea Statewide International Film Festival (2015), Shanghai Biennale (2014), Milan Film Festival (2010).
Wang Bing’s works are collected in the National Art Center of Queen Sofia, Madrid, Spain, EYE Museum, Hong Kong China M + Museum, Pompidou Art Center in Paris, France, National Library of France, National Modern Museum in Athens, Greece, Alexander Tutsek-Siftung Art Foundation in Munich, Germany.
About the Gallery
West Gallery (Lanzhou)
A professional video gallery established in Lanzhou in February 2020, dedicated to the exhibition, communication, and collection of photography works, fully embodying the value of the video, and mainly promoting photography art works in contemporary art, as well as Chinese documentary film directors’ photography and video works. West Gallery always insists on starting from its own context and intervening in the current social ecology with a reflective attitude. Focusing on the individual practice of artists, we strive to provide artists with a serious, open, and experimental platform, and systematically sort out the work of artists through extensive and in-depth research. West Gallery is also actively cooperating with art museums, trying to cross the established boundaries of the art mechanism, creating a platform with more possibilities and attitudes, and providing the public with a different window for viewing, approaching, and participating in contemporary photography art.
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