王宁徳 WANGNINGDE

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About Some Days

Chang Lu

2006

    Wang Ningde belongs to the generation of artists born in the 1970s. By using an open structure in his Some Days series, he allows a dreamlike tragedy featuring both absurdity and fiction to gradually unfold.

    Wang Ningde seems to purposely deemphasize his characters’ rich facial expressions by featuring them with closed eyes. Also frequently appearing in the works are an unreal sky above clumsy landscapes, corpulent women and skinny boys... All these seem to be designed and arranged in a distorted and artificial way by a heart-shadowed and nerve-wrecked studio photographer. However, these pictures give no impression of the unreal. On the contrary, Wang effectively achieves the aim of uncovering truthfulness of memory by deliberately making use of this kind of "false" pattern.

   Wang Ningde is not only a good collector of uncertain and distorted memory fragments, but also shows a startling ability to make sense of absurdism in history and reality. From a technical side, he still manages to maintain the fascination and charm of the art of photography itself; these two combined aspects make his works sharp, profound, and pure.  To the viewer these memories and “history”, though obviously distorted, are the hints that the artist leaves in answer to the mystery. In answer to today’s reality, what Wang Ningde speaks of lies in perfect balance between history and reverie.