Lot 627: WANG DU

WANG DU B.1956 NO COMMENT executed in 2001 newspapers, TV sets, computers and stainless steel 348(H) by 300 by 270 cm.; 137(H) by 118 1/8 by 106 1/2 in.

Paris, Palais de Tokyo- Site de création contemporain, opening group exhibition, 2002

Wang Du, Paris, 2004, pp. 88-91, illustrated in colour
China Art Now, Italy, Flammarion, 2004, p. 71

Galerie Art et Public, Geneva
Sotheby's New York, March 21 2007, lot 67
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Born in 1956 in Wuhan, Wang Du has long played an important role in Chinese contemporary art. In 1986 he co-founded The Salon of Artists of Southern China in Guangzhou, which advocated free expression and organized the so-called "First Experimental Exhibition" that year. A pro-democracy advocate in 1989, Wang was arrested and imprisoned, and after his release in 1990, he immigrated to Paris, where he continues to live and work today.

Wang's artistic focus is the critical analysis and deconstruction of the mass media's power and ubiquity. As one who made caricatures of propaganda imagery as a child and was shocked upon his arrival in the West by the media's overwhelming infiltration of the public sphere, Wang's perceptions are well honed to expose the media's systems of manipulation. And with large-scale sculpture and installation work that is as consistently thought-provoking as it is spectacular, Wang has established an international reputation as a leading conceptual artist, particularly in Europe.

No Comment (Lot 627) of 2001, is characteristic of the artist's work and embodies a range of critiques. The giant size of the trash receptacle and volume of media with which it is filled unequivocally declare Wang's view, despite the double entendre of the work's title: the daily news is rubbish. More subtly, however, Wang may be suggesting that we consume this media with as little care as we give our trash, or that the repetitive and predictable fast-food format in which it is offered merits no better.

Unexpectedly, an overwhelming majority of the newspapers in the gargantuan waste basket, which are variously dated to the final months of 2001, are the left-leaning Libération rather than the more conservative Le Monde. Clearly, it is the medium itself and the structure of its message Wang Du critiques in No Comment. And in this overflow of media, one live television newsfeed works as well as any other to convey the artist's outrage.