User:Timo van Dijk
Museum Of Fantastic Forgeries
Wang Guangle - Coffin Paint
Coffin Paint is a serie of paintings based on the production idea of painting multiple layers of acrylic paint over a period of time. The piece Coffin Paint 131127 (2013) I chose is build out of strokes of white and black paint which Guangle applied two times a day, creating a pattern of thin organic lines. The power behind his series of paintings is the idea and production behind it. It is based on an old Chinese part of culture, in which the Chinese prepare their coffins during their last years.
""...the "Coffin Paints" have a very specific cultural reference: It is customary for some Chinese, as they reach late middle age, to purchase their coffin and repaint it every year, thus hoping to achieve longevity. Wang imagines that his pigment asks to live.""
-mutualart.com 2009 Link-
Guangle used this idea of painting to create different paintings with the same technique.
In a way his way of producing the paintings can be seen as a form of conditional design, where he as an artist restricts himself with a set of conditions on how to produce his work. By applying a stroke of white paint, and then wait for half a day for the black stroke to build up a whole canvas is almost mechanical and machine like.
