Wang Ziling (b.1988 in Hunan, China) creates astonishing sculptural paintings in which she explores our perception of external surroundings by reforming the structure of how we see and perceive.
While delving into the relationship between colours and their abstract manifestations, Wang Ziling’s works attempt to break with convention. Her artistic practice explores a new sense of freedom and generates unrestrained abstract forms that cannot be confined to the limits of traditional frames. The colours in her works are boldly flying outside the boundaries of conventional paintings, providing the viewer with a three-dimensional visual challenge.
Inspired by artists such as Olafur Eliasson, whose practice creates an enhanced experience of the environment by questioning our social way of thinking and seeing, Wang Ziling generates connections between structures and images to encourage and challenge our perception of imagery.
Wang Ziling’s practice also incorporates influences from Gerhard Richter and Ian Davenport. It simultaneously adopts and contemporise the cavalier perspective of ancient Chinese visual representation of space and time. In doing so, the connections in her paintings link her exploration of our current cultural and visual experience and customs with ancient visual perspectives, whilst simultaneously connecting with the subject and thing in itself.
In using this approach, Wang Ziling encourages the viewer to travel from one image to another, from one time to another, and from one space to another. This process of seeing interacts with different spatial viewing logics and expectations. The connected images are fragments of what we experience both through time and our understanding of the external environment.
Born in 1988 in Hunan, China, Wang Ziling lives and works in London.
She graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, and a BA in painting at the Academy of Art & Design from Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Wang Ziling has been involved in projects with museums and art organisations. Her work has been collected by the Today Art Museum in Beijing, China, and the Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens, Greece. She was an artist in residence at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester, UK, in 2018.
Her work has won or been shortlisted in several art prizes, including Sunny Art Prize (2018), Beep Painting Prize (2018), Sunday Times Watercolour Competition (2017), Solo Award (2016), the Lacey Contemporary Art Prize (2016). She has won the Premium Art Special Award from the Society Of Women Artist Exhibition (2016), awarded by Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, and won the International Confederation of Art Critics Art Contest 4th Prize (2016). Her work also won the bronze prize at the ‘Giant Cup’ Today National Art Students Awards at Beijing Today Art Museum (2010).
“I relate conceptually to classical Chinese landscape paintings because the cavalier perspective represents a movement of space and time in one image. But in my work I make this visual representation three dimensional and emphasise the dynamics between solid and negative spaces to create new challenges, aiming to offer stimulating perspectives.”
