Wang Keping 2009-03-28
10 Chancery Lane Gallery,
Hong Kong
“Houses were very small in the past. You would take your tape recorder and go to a park and dance at night. If two people started dancing, hundreds of people would later join in. People didn’t know how to dance, but they’d blindly twist about anyway. If the park were closed, then people would go to an empty lot and play the tape recorder there. Young people would gather and dance, and others would come to watch the commotion. It was magnificent. Suddenly, somebody would say: ‘The police are coming!’ People would scatter and gather at a different place to start dancing again. The police were very vigilant back then and not only arrested people, but also started to confiscate tape recorders. Eventually people stopped dancing outside and danced at home instead. So, having a tape recorder was very important. If you had a recorder, you could invite girls over to dance. If you didn’t have one, then who would go to your house? Everyone wanted a tape recorder.”
Biography:
Wang Keping (b. 1949, Beijing) is an artist who currently lives and works in France.
As one of the initial members of the Stars Group, Wang helped organize the 'Stars' exhibitions of 1979 and 1980, where he also showed his works. Wang works primarily in sculpture, and was an important artist of post-Mao China. From 1983 onwards, Wang’s sculpture has been exhibited in numerous international exhibitions and also collected by the Paris Municipal Government, la Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Seoul Olympic Park, Boston University, the Taiwan Museum of Art and by private collectors worldwide.
