Edouard Malingue Gallery is delighted to announce its participation ‘On Site’ of FIAC 2017.

Wang Wei’s (b.1972, Beijing) public installation ‘Natural History 4 (square)’ (2017) in On Site follows from Wang’s interest in creating immersive settings that are not so much artworks but rather vehicles for situating artifice in the context of life. As such,Wang Wei actively appropriates existing spaces and visual elements, which he then enlarges and adapts according to the exhibition setting. Through this intrinsic process of engagement and decontextualisation, he questions the veracity of natural forms before fresh eyes and constructs windows for investigating new layers of meaning.

Spanning the Avenue Winston Churchill, ‘Natural History 4 (square)’ (2017) is a mosaic tile platform illustrating a pattern intrinsic to those found in Dongguan, Guangdong. Viewed and interacted with, Wang Wei aims to transport a material that is often used in China to cover large surfaces of buildings onto the streets of Paris, creating a parallel between modes of construction, decor and personal living.

Indeed, Wang Wei aims to build on his running consideration of displacement regarding time and context. The mosaic tile, recognised as an “affordable material of very high quality“ in China takes on a different role in the context of an art fair on the other side of the world. Open to observation, Wang Wei deliberately defies the material’s original purpose and presents a contradiction of actual reality, fleshing out a state of confusion, potential suspicion, isolation and transmutation.