Hunsand Space (Hangzhou) will present Huang Wangfu’s solo exhibition Muted Longings on December 7, 2024, featuring over ten paintings primarily depicting fruit and views from windows.
Huang Wangfu is an artist active on social media, though its significance to him lies not in its content but in the perceptual changes it subtly induces on a subconscious level. One manifestation of this is the invisible reliance on advertisements. Without advertisements, people facing empty screens or walls often feel frustrated—not merely because they lose opportunities for games or dreams (even if those are illusions)—but because they are profoundly disheartened by the sense that “others” are not taking care of them.
A new commercial demand has emerged, bringing with it subtle cues that allow what is seen to be magnified, shrunk, twisted, or stretched at any moment. These physical transformations are not deliberate but are responses to the seemingly changing yet fundamentally static psychological needs inherent in the advertising environment. This subtle, muted response serves both as a compensation for fleeting moments of joy and as a conscious adaptation to the constraints of limited space, embodying quiet longings beneath the surface.
The airbrush is Huang Wangfu’s primary painting tool. Its unique qualities make the aesthetic appeal required by commercial advertising clear and direct. Humor and a relaxed stance are the artist’s only weapons against the unattainable ideal of advertising aesthetics. In this context, objects undergo psychological integration, transforming into a forgotten pomegranate seed (even though it must stay tightly clustered), a discarded banana peel, or a firmly grasped curtain...
