Wei Dong at Nicholas Robinson Gallery
Nude Chinese Mermaids
By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 27, 2009
Wei Dong: New Paintings
Nicholas Robinson Gallery
535 West 20th Street
NY, NY, 10011
212 560 9075
Through April 4
The Chinese artist Wei Dong paints meticulously rendered, representational paintings that depict erotic fantasies of Asian women with human upper bodies and lower extremities that evolve into fish tails with scales and fins. Several of these intriguing works are on view at the Nicholas Robinson Gallery in Chelsea through April 4.
It is the exotic and provocative subject matter that draws us to these images rather than the manner in which they are painted. The brushwork and technical approach is rather deadpan and academic. The artist who grew up during the Cultural Revolution derived his notions of Western Art, largely influenced by Italian Renaissance and Mannerist paintings, from reproductions of art books. Having been trained to resist academic art it is confounding to not know whether to laugh at or with these works.
The initial response, ho hum, is to sense that these are just nude images, kind of like calendar art, or Playboy Centerfolds. Other than points for technical merit, awarded grudgingly, why linger? But then you begin to absorb the details and the subtle narrative elements.
In a horizontal painting "Game with a Fish" two women are holding a large eviscerated fish. Since they are cropped at mid thigh we do not know whether, like the other women, they are mermaids. It is also unclear just what is their interest in the gutted fish?.Is it a potential food item for dinner? Or is it a prop in some kind of sexual activity? The woman who holds the fish turns and smiles/ laughs at the viewer. She appears to want to share the absurd humor of the tableau. The other nude woman, however, reaches out with an arm to grasp the fish, but also twists and turns away with her head depicted at an odd angle. As with all of the other women she is devoid of public hair. This is a trope of academic fantasy art. Think, for example, of nudes by Ingres. The norm of academic art, and soft core porn, is that pubic hair disrupts and vulgarizes the erotic fantasy. Pubic hair, first introduced to Western Art by Courbet, was a signifier of realism, and this is not the intention of the artist.
The mermaid in another horizontal canvas reclines in the manner of an Ingres Odalisque but there is a twist. There are objects near her upper body that identify tea being served. But the woman/ mermaid has a bit of a conundrum. In the manner of a Mafia execution the end of her tail, or flippers, are trapped in a bucket of cement. Surely she is facing some terrible fate but we haven't a clue as to why.
In addition to this exotic subject matter the artist has a strange way of tormenting the flesh. There are curious folds of fat and on close inspection in one work it is a bit of a turn off as the flesh rolls and rumbles from the human upper body to the lower fishy one. There is even a gaping hole about where one would find a vagina. The painting is a bit too graphic for polite company.
The reference to Mannerism is quite specific in a work that depicts an ersatz saint with a man in a generic military costume seemingly stunned as he gazes up at her. His shaved head and tiny pigtail is a pun and Asian in joke. The artist appears to be having fun but there is a lot of sweat equity to pull off what ultimately may just be elaborate jokes. A clue to all this is conveyed by the artist's statement quoted below.
"The references or scenes themselves are not as relevant as some may thinkÂ…There is no story here. The fish girls are both the subject and the tool. They are fantastical and do not exist in realityÂ…a normal scene appears mysterious, fish and girl merge into one, animal instinct is humanized, and human desire is animalized.
"I grew up in a military academy, right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. People around me wore the same uniform in which gender is simply invisibleÂ…No one would talk about sexuality, as if it was too dirty and evilÂ…I was first introduced to figurative nude paintings from the Western art books my father kept secretly at the house. I started to make up my own storiesÂ…but these stories are for my own fantasy world and not to tellÂ…When I grew up, I had this irresistible desire to reveal the stories that were intended for myself to others. In a way my obsession with female sexuality and attentiveness to flesh are ways to explore my own desires as well as cultural and social constructions."
Wei Dong, 2008