Video: Gothic surrealism and a box of toys illustrated by Xue Wang
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
American directors who shoot horror films love to turn the cutest characters into the main villains from whom no one expects a stab in the back. Like a good nanny or a school teacher, a pretty little girl or her favorite doll in a blue dress. Not to mention the killer clown maniac and the death-bringing carousel with horses. So it would come as no surprise to learn that the Gothic illustrations depicting the secret life of dolls out of a box of children's toys are the work of an American artist. but Xue Wang, the author of dark surreal scenes from the life of children's toys, was born and raised in China, and this leaves an indelible "oriental" imprint on her "western" creativity. Xue Wang's "Western" art comes from London. Here the girl graduated from the Westminster Institute, lives here, works, creates her amazing paintings and participates in exhibitions of contemporary art. Her works skillfully intertwine European restraint and coolness, oriental lightness and elegance, and typically Western plots from the aforementioned horror films. Surreal scenes are mixed with items from a child's toy box. However, such toys are unlikely to be found among dolls, toy soldiers and soft animals of an ordinary preschooler.
In her drawings, the artist turns to the dark side of the imagination, where children's games go from being cute and funny to dark and cruel. So, the Teddy bear plays "doctor" with a porcelain doll, but does not cure it, but cripples it, depriving it of its eyes. And the twin dolls, depicting nurses, assistants of the good Aibolit, sew not cut off limbs at all to the injured animals, but foreign objects, turning them into hybrids. The animals here are evil and grinning, good fairies are gloomy and angry, and even funny puppets are plotting something very creepy, corresponding to the unkind Gothic atmosphere created by the young artist Xue Wang.
However, the artist herself probably believes that her work demonstrates what we already know. Each of us has a dark side, we all have dark thoughts from time to time, and we can be cruel too, offending relatives and friends. And you will never know what kind of personality actually hides behind the sweet and smiling face of the interlocutor until you get to know his dark side. Read more about this art project on the Xue Wang website.
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