Important Notice

Born in Chengdu, China in 1974, Peng Wei is a versatile contemporary artist known for her graceful ink paintings that apply the imagery of traditional Chinese literati art styles onto diverse mediums including rice paper mannequins, silken shoes and Chinese fans. The daughter of well-known classical Chinese artist Peng Xiancheng, she began to paint at a very young age. A hiatus followed, but she returned to art in college, finding that it was... Born in Chengdu, China in 1974, Peng Wei is a versatile contemporary artist known for her graceful ink paintings that apply the imagery of traditional Chinese literati art styles onto diverse mediums including rice paper mannequins, silken shoes and Chinese fans. The daughter of well-known classical Chinese artist Peng Xiancheng, she began to paint at a very young age. A hiatus followed, but she returned to art in college, finding that it was "still the only thing I was really good at." (Artist quoted in Li Hongrui, "Painter Peng Wei: Art is my Lifetime Friend," China Daily, 2016, online) Peng Wei studied painting at Nankai University in Tianjin, followed by a master's degree in Philosophy and Aesthetics. She also worked as a reporter and editor for Art, a journal published by the China Artists' Association. The artist is currently based in Beijing, and her work has been exhibited in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland and New York, and is part of several international collections.

The present lot belongs to a series of Chinese robes that the artist painted on rice paper using the ink and wash technique. In the elegant, classical style, the robe portrays cloudy, pastel blue mountains and gentle waters; the hemlines of the neck and sleeves are painted to appear like brocade trimmings. "Rather than saying Peng Wei is painting clothing, it would perhaps be more apt to say she's "painting skin"... Clothing forms a metaphorical manifestation of her experiences, memories, and interests. Onto the life?likeness of the clothing, she applies a dimly discernible illusoriness. There is no doubt that everything is "past," yet it nevertheless shares the property of natural things that have a hypothetical history... Besides being implicated in body politics or serving as symbols and declarations of identity, [clothes] are also capable of achieving a kind of state of mind. They add value to emotion, and in a clamorous and chaotic world, they can be enriched with a dispassionate self?expression." (Feng Boyi, "Splendor in Ink and Wash," pengweiart.cn, online)

Artist Xu Lei also finds something universal in these depictions of embroidered gowns, likening them to ghosts, with extravagantly woven exteriors that conceal hollowness and nostalgia. "These reminiscences are unclaimed and disordered, coinciding with Chinese poetry's emotional recollections of a "past world" that is now lost, so they do not meet in isolation; they are a general worry about history??? The shells of life, such as cicada shells and dried flowers, are often more complete and lasting, and deeper, than life itself. This is also true of Peng Wei's embroidered gowns; their beautiful floral decoration condenses lost emotion into form, amazing us with the exquisiteness within the fragility." (Quoted in "Cicada Shells and Dried Flowers," pengweiart.cn, online)

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