Wang Mao

Six Velázquez, 2020, acrylic on foam board, 60 × 62 cm

Baroque, 2020, acrylic on foam board, 60 × 60 cm

(Left) Gold Ingot (Song), 2020, acrylic on foam board, 55 × 60 cm
(Right) Gold Bar, 2020, acrylic on foam board, 27 × 40 cm

A man of Chu once went to sell his pearl in Zheng. He placed the pearl in a magnolia-wood box, perfumed it with cassia and pepper, adorned it with pearls and jade, embellished it with roses, and trimmed it with kingfisher feathers. The man of Zheng bought the box but returned the pearl. This may be called skillful at selling the box, but not skillful at selling the pearl.
— Han Feizi, “Outer Chapters, Left I”

Painting is an act within the process of presenting a work. It directs the work toward a certain place—a place that seems very much like art—but in fact, this seemingly artistic act may be very far from art itself. … Foam board is a material far removed from art, yet its low sense of value (which satisfies the artist’s conscious resistance to the capitalist value system, as well as helplessness and conformity toward it), its origin in petrochemical production (which makes it distinctly capitalist, marked far more by modern industrial rhythms than flax canvas rooted in agrarian civilization), and its extreme stability that prevents degradation for thousands of years (which fulfills our vague yet unwavering fantasy of art’s permanence) … may make it closer to art than any other material. …