Jeffrey Chong Wang: Artist Spotlight. Dorothy Circus Gallery (DCG) Rome

Beijing-raised and Canada-based artist Jeffrey Chong Wang lived and studied in Florence, France and New York, eventually earning an MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2009.

Jeffrey Chong Wang fuses a personal and surrealist vision with a refined and realistic pictorial technique to tell stories of Chinese everyday life. Wang with realistic figures in order to reflect on the nods of Chinese history.

Wang invites us to look through the windows, inside the houses and in the rooms, of his characters, arousing our curiosity with scenarios of classic compositions, sometimes inspired by the Florentine Renaissance, stimulating both our sensitivity and our judgment. Wang, however, is not only aiming at social satire, but rather at playing with the way we interpret images and events.

In his works, characterised by a soft and vintage palette, Wong reconfigures the narration of the contemporary world by challenging the notion of historicity and giving rise to a “vertical” time. The feelings that emerge from Wang’s stories are manifold: resignation, embarrassment, tenderness, ingenuity, solitude. All of these produce exceptional still images that remind us of the iconography of Wood’s American Gothic style. Wang’s work has been exhibited internationally since 2008, especially in Canada and China, gaining a prestigious international base of collectors. He has been exhibiting with Dorothy Circus Gallery since 2018.

Each of Jeffrey Chong Wang’s paintings is almost a self-portrait of himself, as it reflects his cultural upbringing, personal feelings and experiences.
Katy Cowan, creative boom

Jeffrey Chong Wang_Still Life_2022_45.72 x 60.96_Oil on canvas_Courtesy of DCG and artist

“The Meeting”, which opens on Saturday, February 18, explores the personal suggestions of the couple’s relationship that characterise the story of Jeffrey Chong Wang and his wife Grace Eunshin Kim linked in life and work through numerous references to classical painting.

The Meeting opens a gap between the past and the future. Time seems to disappear, giving way to human feeling, which emerges as the embodiment of an elusive present in which we are similar and accomplices.

The distant gaze of Wang’s characters does not lament the past, but restores an ancient nostalgia that it is unable to hide and thus betrays its restlessness and uncontrollable search for amorous ecstasy.

Biography

Beijing-raised and Canada-based artist Jeffrey Chong Wang lived and studied in Florence, France and New York, eventually earning an MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2009.

Jeffrey Chong Wang fuses a personal and surrealist vision with a refined and realistic pictorial technique to tell stories of Chinese everyday life. Wang with realistic figures in order to reflect on the nods of Chinese history. Wang invites us to look through the windows, inside the houses and in the rooms, of his characters, arousing our curiosity with scenarios of classic compositions, sometimes inspired by the Florentine Renaissance, stimulating both our sensitivity and our judgment. Wang, however, is not only aiming at social satire, but rather at playing with the way we interpret images and events.

In his works, characterised by a soft and vintage palette, Wong reconfigures the narration of the contemporary world by challenging the notion of historicity and giving rise to a “vertical” time. The feelings that emerge from Wang’s stories are manifold: resignation, embarrassment, tenderness, ingenuity, solitude. All of these produce exceptional still images that remind us of the iconography of Wood’s American Gothic style. Wang’s work has been exhibited internationally since 2008, especially in Canada and China, gaining a prestigious international base of collectors. He has been exhibiting with Dorothy Circus Gallery since 2018.