Oil on canvas

130 × 162 cm. 51 1/8 × 63 3/4 in.

Signed in Chinese, and dated on bottom right

LITERATURE
2013, Grey Carneval: Art in China since 2000, Guangxi Normal University Press, Guilin, p.158
2016, Wang Yin: The Gift, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Nova Publishing House , Beijing, p.32-33
EXHIBITED
29 Mar – 28 Jun 2015, The System of Objects, Shanghai Mingsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
29 Mar – 27 May 2016, Wang Yin: The Gift, UCCA Center for Contempory Art, Beijing

PROVENANCE
19 Jun 2018, China Guardian Spring Auction, Lot 1738
Acquired directly by present Asian collector from the above

The Metaphor of Benjamin, the Gift of Painting
Wang Yin's Aesthetic Classic Gas Station No.2

In the 1980s, when the art world was enthusiastic about absorbing the avant-garde nutrients from Western modern art, Wang Yin was not swallowed by the tide of the times, but meticulously learned and absorbed the spirit and experience of it. This attitude of deliberately keeping a distance from the mainstream always runs through Wang's creative career in the future. After 2003, he turned his attention to art history, and at the ideological level, he had a profound connection with the experience of the historical process of modern Chinese art, and he established a creative vocabulary with the characteristics of “repetition”.

The German thinker Walter Benjamin described the metaphor of gas station in One Way Road, “The relationship between public opinion and the huge machinery of social life is like the relationship between oil and machinery: People do not climb into turbines to pour the engine oil, however, people inject engine oil into the invisible yet must-know rivet interface.” Gas Station No.2 confirms the saying of the artist, “The results of all these paintings are discussion of the relationship between oil painting and me and why I paint-this simple question is actually an object I face when I work.” Just like refueling a car at a gas station, it is obvious that it is not possible to directly see how the oil enters the engine. But the gasoline injected into the fuel tank will follow the set system just right into the place where it can be effective. Therefore, to ensure the art to have social utility, it does not need to face the entire social reality, but only needs to find “entry into the social system”. This opinion about public opinion and society, the expression and utility of literature and art, all coincide with Wang Yin's thinking. Inspired by Benjamin, Wang creates the Gas Station series.

A New Interpretation of the Old, Shaping a Personalized History

Gas Station series can be regarded as Wang's most representative classic. In the 2016 big solo exhibition of Wang at Beijing UCCA, the curator arranged the large-scale Gas Station No.2 and smaller-scale Gas Station No.1 at the entrance to initiate a review of the artist's 15-year creative career, which shows the importance and key significance of this series! From 2010 to 2015, Wang created five gas station themed works. Among them, Gas Station No.2 is a rare large-scale work with a single scene in the same series. The structure, color, and context are pure, moving, fascinating, and inspiring.

Subvert Ideas with Images

The artist is best at the unsaturated tones and flat-painting methods which are applied in the painting to create peace and tranquility under the setting sun in the afternoon. Compared with other works in the same series, the brushstrokes of this work illustrate the colorization of layers, reminding people of the painter Edward Hopper, who is famous for depicting the lonely contemporary American life. In terms of emotional expression, they are not all the same. When Hopper created Nighthawks in 1942, the gloom of the Great Depression had just dissipated, and the war immediately followed. The detachment of the painting reflects the confusion that people have nowhere to hide, which is a general depiction of social life. On the other hand, Wang Yin studies painting from painting, expressing his attitude towards the present and modernity through his attitude towards the history of painting. Therefore, Gas Station No. 2 is of great significance in its function of analysis. It is Wang's escape from the control of Western standards on art expression and an excellent trial result of his search for the self-narrative and expression rooted in the Chinese context.

Price estimate:
HKD: 900,000 - 1,300,000
USD: 115,600 - 167,000

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,176,000