The concept of nostalgia for a long time represented a source of inspiration for artists, writers and intellectuals. Originating from ancient Greece, at the end of the 17th century the term was connected to a sense of homesickness and was associated with sentiments of melancholia, weakness and anxiety. During the nineteenth century, the psychological understandings of nostalgia gradually gave way to an existential condition of longing for the past linked to the awareness of the passage of time and of the ephemerality of existence: as stated by Svetlana Boym, nostalgia is an incurable disease given that is dependent on the modern conception of unrepeatable and irreversible time. Even though nostalgia and its sentimental dimension seem unfashionable in today’s society characterized by the fast pace of technological innovation and by a future- oriented perception of time that move linearly towards a constant progress, contemporary artist often take nostalgia in its metaphorical connotations as a starting point to address in their works issues related to memory, time, space and the meaning of existence. For his second solo show at Parkview Green Art, He Wenjue proposes a selection of works that explore the issue of nostalgia with a wide range of nuances: as a reflection about human existential experience, as an integral part of postmodern art of reference and intertextuality, as a sensory experience of the past.
The sentiment of nostalgia in He Wenjue’s works is activated through a specific selection of subject matters, expressive language and artistic mediums. Some of his paintings capture banal images of daily life characterized by an intimate and deli tmosphere, often imbued with a poetic melancholy; other works represent images of movies, thus awakening in the viewers personal and collective memories. The artist captures images from famous movies thus determining a shift of the image from dynamic state to stillness: while creating a complex and multifaceted structure of cross- cultural references and multidisciplinary elements, He Wenjue’s re- interpretation of movie scenes produces in us a somehow balanced yet ambivalent mix between sadness and pleasure, given that subject matters stretch between comedy and tragedy, tears and smiles, disappearance and reappearance.
The concept of nostalgia for a long time represented a source of inspiration for artists, writers and intellectuals. Originating from ancient Greece, at the end of the 17th century the term was connected to a sense of homesickness and was associated with sentiments of melancholia, weakness and anxiety. During the nineteenth century, the psychological understandings of nostalgia gradually gave way to an existential condition of longing for the past linked to the awareness of the passage of time and of the ephemerality of existence: as stated by Svetlana Boym, nostalgia is an incurable disease given that is dependent on the modern conception of unrepeatable and irreversible time. Even though nostalgia and its sentimental dimension seem unfashionable in today’s society characterized by the fast pace of technological innovation and by a future- oriented perception of time that move linearly towards a constant progress, contemporary artist often take nostalgia in its metaphorical connotations as a starting point to address in their works issues related to memory, time, space and the meaning of existence. For his second solo show at Parkview Green Art, He Wenjue proposes a selection of works that explore the issue of nostalgia with a wide range of nuances: as a reflection about human existential experience, as an integral part of postmodern art of reference and intertextuality, as a sensory experience of the past.
The sentiment of nostalgia in He Wenjue’s works is activated through a specific selection of subject matters, expressive language and artistic mediums. Some of his paintings capture banal images of daily life characterized by an intimate and deli tmosphere, often imbued with a poetic melancholy; other works represent images of movies, thus awakening in the viewers personal and collective memories. The artist captures images from famous movies thus determining a shift of the image from dynamic state to stillness: while creating a complex and multifaceted structure of cross- cultural references and multidisciplinary elements, He Wenjue’s re- interpretation of movie scenes produces in us a somehow balanced yet ambivalent mix between sadness and pleasure, given that subject matters stretch between comedy and tragedy, tears and smiles, disappearance and reappearance.