Gongxin Wang

Wang Gongxin resides sometimes in Beijing and other times in New York. He was born in Beijing in 1960 and finished his artistic training at Beijing Normal University in 1982. His work has been quite concerned with the interface between Chinese and Western culture, in terms of content and of his transmission of "Western" artistic ideas to his peers. For example, his piece "The Sky of Brooklyn: Digging a Hole in Beijing" (1995) was one of the first site-specific installations in China. The site happened to be Wang?s personal residence, where he commissioned workers to dig a hole three meters deep and place in it a video monitor playing footage of the Brooklyn sky, in a riff on both the American childhood fantasy of "digging a hole to China" and the Chinese saying "to look at the world from a well." Wang Gongxin?s video works include "The Old Bench" (1996; exhibited in Inside/ Out), "Baby Talk" (1996), "Public Hallway" (1997), and "Shepard" (1998).