Person
Artist
Wang Qingsong
王庆松
Date of birth
1966
Place Of birth
Daqing, Heilongjiang, China
Biography
Celebrated for theatrically staged photographs that often involve hundreds of models on elaborate sets, Wang Qingsong was born in 1966 in Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, at the start of the Cultural Revolution. He studied oil painting at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, graduating in 1993, and for a time worked in the Pop-inspired ‘Gaudy Art’ style. Later he decided that photography was a more effective medium for his developing interests. His earliest photocollages were deliberately kitsch pastiches of Chinese tradition, folk art and the newly emerging consumer culture. By 2000, however, he was creating ambitious large-scale staged photographs, allegories of the ills of contemporary society. His work has been widely shown internationally, including in the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Other significant recent exhibitions include Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing, Irving Stenn Gallery, UMMA, USA; Wang Qingsong: The Glorious Life, Museum of Photography Seoul, Korea; Alternative Reality, United Art Museum, Wuhan, China (all 2019); The Great Wall?, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany (2017); One World, One Dream: Works of Wang Qingsong, Dirimart Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2016); Wang Qingsong – Everything is Possible, Gallery Of Photography, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Asian Contemporary Photography, Wang Qingsong and Jung Yeondoo, Daegu Art Museum, Korea (2014) and Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide, at the International Center for Photography, New York (2011). Wang Qingsong lives and works between Beijing and New York.