KometenMelodie: He Wei

  • Overview
    KometenMelodie, He Wei

    KometenMelodie

    He Wei Solo exhibition

     

    PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY MILANO

     

    Opening

    Thursday, 28 November 

    6 PM

     
     
    From Nov. 28, 2024 to Jan. 13, 2025, Chinese artist He Wei brings the solo exhibition KometenMelodie to the Milan spaces of Primo Marella Gallery.
     
    Like a comet, the exhibition takes the viewer on a journey through Germany's different historical and artistic eras from the 1930s to the 1980s, constructing a visual journey through works that study and narrate the great cultural masterpieces that Germany produced during five decades of the 20th century, transforming itself into a center of artistic and cultural ferment.
  • From the Neuer Deutscher Film to Kraut Rock, from the Dusseldorf art-music school to movements such as the Bauhaus-whose traces can be found especially in the artist's formal research-He Wei presents alongside this art-historical study, his unmistakable portraits inspired by cinematic figures from the films of Neuer Deutscher Film directors such as Herzog and Fassbinder.
     
    Through a unique technique and vision reminiscent of a kind of new cubism that combines hyperrealism and bold distortions, He Wei analyzes and dismantles the portrait, creating a deeper perception through the use of strong, incisive colors, and through masterful stains and brushstrokes.
    In the exhibition, extremely elegant female divas will be contrasted with more cryptic characters inspired by the protagonists of film stories, often painted in black and white, as in the films of the 1950s.
     
    Disrupting traditional proportions and perspectives, the works revolutionize forms by giving strong attention to fashions, hair styles and depictions typical of the characters of the time.
    The artist's research, which investigates shapes and colors, beauty and disturbing figures, certainties and doubts, leading the viewer to move from exteriority to interiority, interweaving realistic-figurative compositions of anonymous bodies and abstract color inserts.
     
     

  • from bauhaus, to the neuer deutscher film to krautrock

    the majestic expressional concept of this exhibiton

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    Bauhaus and its geometry

     
    The itinerary begins with a tribute to the Bauhaus, the movement that redefined the relationship between art, design and architecture in the 1920s and 1930s and became a symbol of modernity and innovation. 
    The influence of the Bauhaus extended beyond the temporal and geographical borders of Germany: in the 1970s, the British music group pioneering gothic punk, led by frontman Peter Murphy, not only named their band 'Bauhaus', but even chose the logo designed by German painter Oskar Schlemmer in 1922 as their symbol. The famous Half Face, with its balance of geometry and abstract expression, became an iconic emblem that the band used to define their innovative aesthetic.
     
    The traces of this rigorous and visionary art can be seen in the formal research of He Wei, who takes up its principles and reworks them through his contemporary artistic language. In the exhibition, the artist celebrates this rich cultural convergence by creating a three-dimensional sculpture that reinterprets the well-known half-face logo, transforming it into a tangible symbol of the dialogue between music, art and history. 
     
     
     
  • Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder and the inspiration of the characters, a study on german filmography Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder and the inspiration of the characters, a study on german filmography Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder and the inspiration of the characters, a study on german filmography

    Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder and the inspiration of the characters

    a study on german filmography
    The German culture of those years, however, did not end with the rationality of the Bauhaus, but also extended to the emotional and decadent dimension, expressed in iconic cinematic works such as Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930). This masterpiece, starring Marlene Dietrich, embodies the melancholic elegance and inner anguish of those years. 
     
    He Wei evokes this atmosphere through paintings that recreate the ambiguous charm of the female figures of the time, in a dialogue between past and present that continues into the 1950s and 1960s, two decades from which the artist draws his visual language, characterized by the expressive power of black and white images and an incisive monochromatism.
     
    Particular attention is paid to the divas of the time, immortalized by their unmistakable, well-groomed and sophisticated hairstyles, symbols of elegance and charisma. He Wei takes these elements and transforms them into portraits that combine hyper-realism and distortion, where outward beauty is intertwined with a latent restlessness.
     
    The cinematic references are further intensified when the artist turns to the Neuer Deutscher Film, which developed between the 1960s and 1980s, and its main protagonists, such as Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In this phase, He Wei focuses not only on the themes and atmospheres of the cinema of those years, but also on the refined and impeccable style of dress, especially of the male characters. Tailored suits with essential cuts, elegant ties and pochettes become symbols of a sober elegance that sometimes betrays an inner turmoil, a deep psychological complexity.

  • music, krautrock and the sound of the future

    The narrative and visual experimentation of these directors is echoed by an equally innovative contemporary music scene: Krautrock. Both currents, although different in their means of expression, share a common aspiration: to overcome the limits of traditional conventions and create something radically new through revolutionary forms of language capable of expressing the complexity of the contemporary world.
     
    He Wei observes, studies and is inspired by the musical experimentation of Krautrock, epitomized by bands such as Kraftwerk, who defined an innovative and revolutionary sound in those years. With its hypnotic rhythms, electronic sounds and psychedelic, avant-garde imagery, Krautrock became the absolute symbol of an era of great cultural ferment, and Kraftwerk the pioneers of a futuristic aesthetic capable of influencing not only the local music scene but also world-famous artists such as David Bowie.
     
    During his time in Berlin between 1977 and 1979, Bowie, in collaboration with Brian Eno, composed the famous Berlin Trilogy - consisting of the albums Low, “Heroes” and Lodger - which deeply and openly absorbed the atmosphere of Krautrock and the sounds of Kraftwerk, building a bridge between German musical culture and the international avant-garde.
     
    He Wei captures and pays homage to this iconic period of the White Duke and all that was inspired by German culture over more than six decades, attempting to capture the creative ferment and energy of those years through a unique technique and vision reminiscent of a kind of new Cubism, combining hyper-realism and bold deformations, through pictorial and sculptural compositions that alternate between abstract figures and enigmatic images, movie stars and anonymous characters, order and chaos, harmony and dissonance.
    The use of monochrome, strong colours and bold brushstrokes accentuates the contrast between beauty and anxiety, between the external and the internal world, leading the viewer to question what lies behind appearances.
     
     

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  • HE WEI Born in 1987 in Anhui province (eastern China), He Wei undertook his first artistic studies in China, then...

    HE WEI

    Born in 1987 in Anhui province (eastern China), He Wei undertook his first artistic studies in China, then moved to Italy and attended the prestigious Brera Academy of Fine Arts, in Milano, where he came into contact with a totally new existential dimension, destined to mark his artistic language in depth.


    Colors, shapes and symbols, seemingly chosen at random, are actually linked to the artist's unconscious and experiences. His works refer to Western icons of which excerpts of their faces and bodies are portrayed, mainly in black and white, to which chromatic inserts are applied, symbolizing that tumult of instinct and that chaotic and turbulent set of drives of Being. The result is a photo-realist painting that is combined with phases of abstraction, which see shades of colors get lost in the rigor of vertical lines and square shapes.

     

    The artist's research, dedicated to the investigation of forms, and colors, ranges from the beautiful to the ugly, from certainty to doubt, from exteriority to interiority. In recent works, the investigation of emotional turmoil is particularly pronounced, and is expressed in a highly rhythmic and pulsating language. The signs, forms, scratches and scribbles. All interwoven between the realistic-figurative compositions of anonymous bodies and the abstract color inserts that force us to go beyond the real figure of the visible.  In his recent paintings, He Wei analyzes and dismantles the portrait to create a stronger and more violent perception than in his earlier canvases, which were characterized by the erasure of the face through graffiti or colored geometric shapes. The result of the new portraits is truly fascinating thanks to the use of very strong and incisive colors and studied and skillful oil stains and brushstrokes.  

     

    In 2014 he received the Laguna Prize at the Venice Arsenal. His exhibitions include “Portraits” (2021) “Hate you, Love you, Fuck you” (2020), “Lost into 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 in China.

  • Installation Shots
  • Works

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    KometenMelodie is a journey into the soul of German culture spanning more than six decades, through the attentive and innovative eye of He Wei, an artist capable of interweaving tradition and modernity, history and the avant-garde, in a visual narrative that invites us to discover the complexity of the past and its relevance in the present.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • KOMETEN MELODIE

     

    HE WEI

     

    PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY MILANO
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