He Wei

born in 1987 in Anhui (China)

"Each form of art is a projection of sensations, a bag of vital energy." HW

Colours, shapes and symbols, which seem to be randomly chosen, are linked to the unconscious and to my memories: the transport of this meaning is the reinterpretation of thoughts and experiences. If the artwork is the 'personification' of thoughts and feelings, then what we see is only a way to interpret them, and the different gestures presented in his works represent the most direct, simple and impulsive communication. This kind of communication has an effect outside concept of values like what is right or wrong.

The artist’s research, dedicated to the investigation of shapes, forms and colors, goes from the beauty to the ugliness, from certainty to doubt, from exteriority to interiority. In recent works, the investigation of an emotional turmoil is particularly accentuated, and it is expressed in a very rhythmic and pulsing language. The signs, shapes, scratches and scribbles. All intertwined between the realistic- figurative compositions of anonymous bodies and the abstract chromatic inserts that force us to go beyond the real figure of the visible.

He Wei is a methodical and thoughtful artist, who carefully observes the world around him. He develops virtual sketches, following a well-detailed creative scheme, where everything becomes a calculated fruit of his mind. In particular, a recent series of abstract sculptures reflect this vision and approach. The works are the result of He Wei’s long research on balance and formal perfection, physicality of the work as well as craftsmanship and art. The concepts that once were contemplated by the theorists of neoplasticism, minimalists or the founders of the Bauhaus School. These enigmatic structures reflect the aesthetic vision of He Wei which finds application both in the field of sculpture and that of painting.

In his recent paintings, He Wei analyses and dismantles the portrait, to create a stronger and more violent perception compared to his previous canvases, characterized by the cancelation of the face through graffiti or coloured geometric shapes. The result of the new portraits is truly fascinating thanks to the use of very strong and incisive colours and studied and skilful oil spots and brushstrokes.

The artist has assigned titles of psychotropic drugs to the works, giving them a curative function (they are med- icines of distorted reality) and at the same time they are representation of contemporaneity, in need of rebal- ance the excess of psychosis and schizophrenia through drugs. In this whirling sensation of confusion and instability, the spectator is brought straight into this art of transition, towards future forms.

Born in 1987 in Anhui Province, China, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, then in Milan. In 2014 He Wei received the Laguna Prize at the Venice Arsenal.

Among his exhibitions, "Portraits" (2021), "Hate you, Love you, Fuck you" (2020), "Lost in a Nurse's Dream" (2017), "A Matter of Life and Death" (2015), "The Second Anhui Oil Art Exhibition" (2008) followed by "Zeitgeist" (2012) and "The Second Anhui Oil Art Exhibition"(2008).

He currently lives and works between Italy and China.

Education

2007 - 2012 Fine Art Academy, Florence

2012 – 2017 Brera Fine Art Academy, Milan

Exhibitions

2021 Portraits, Primo Marella Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland

2020 Hate you, Love you, Fuck you, Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italia

2019 Meccanica delle Meraviglie 13, MO.CA, Brescia, Italy

2018 Undertow, Primae Noctis Art Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland

2017 Lost into a Nurse’s Dream, Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy

Destination Asia, Now, Primae Noctis Art Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland

Artissima, Special project, Turin, Italy