Wang Jianwei

Wang Jianwei (Chinese: 汪建伟; pinyin: Wāng Jiànwěi) is a new media, performance, and installation artist based in Beijing, China.

[citation needed] After two years of reeducation, Wang was conscripted to join the People's Liberation Army in 1977, where he served as a military engineer and operations specialist in a barrack in Qinghe County, Hebei Province, south of Beijing.

[citation needed] During his early years, Wang developed his signature style, employing a documentary practice of studying, observing, sketching, and interacting with his subjects.

[2] Also in 1984, Wang met his future teacher, Zheng Shengtian, who had just returned to China from the United States and brought along materials that referenced Western contemporary art.

During the graduate studies, he read many previously forbidden books on Western literature and philosophy, and was influenced by Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Jorge Luis Borges.

This system theory, introduced by the Chinese mathematician Deng Julong in 1982, provided a methodology that focused on the study of problems using partial or uncertain information.

With Document, Wang aimed at activating what he termed the "grey zone," or "in-between" space, signaling predictions in a combined artistic and scientific experimental process.

A year later, Wang also created Incident¬–Process, State (1993), an installation including video, text, and sculpture at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, inspired by the grey system.

[2] Inspired by a book written by a biologist about the science of crop growth, Wang returned to the village where he received reeducation, and collaborated with a local farmer to stage a performance Circulation–Sowing and Harvesting (1993–1994).

[2] In 2004, Wang attended the fr:Festival d'Automne à Paris, during which he presented Ceremony (2003), a large-scale multimedia work that included theater, performance and new media, at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

[citation needed] Wang's project Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2010), organized by Culturescapes, Basel, employs performance, animation, theater production for film, and a five-channel video component.

This work was significant in Wang's oeuvre, as it was predicated on the performances as events and underscored his philosophy that the production of art is a constant rehearsal in which a continuous process becomes central.

Three years later, Wang participated in the 3rd Shanghai Biennale, which was the first Chinese biennial to include international and new-media artists in addition to traditional art forms.