WANG Guofeng is an independent artist known for large-format, sharp and color photographs distinctive for their critical look at the effect of the 20th century communist movement and its ideology on the lives of individuals in the socialist or former socialist countries. Drawing influence of the scale and composition from his schooling in the painting theories of Song Dynasty and earlier years of painting practice, WANG Guofeng constructed his contemporary form of conceptual photography.

WANG Guofeng started his art career as a painter in early 1990s before employing photography as a primary artistic medium since 2000. His exploration goes beyond the phenomenal representation to challenge the viewers’ preconditioned expectations and perspectives. His earlier communist themed photography focuses on the iconic political architecture in Russia, China and North Korea. The representative works of this category include the Ideality series, the Utopia series and the earlier North Korea series. These buildings represent the political system of the state and the collective unconsciousness under the highly centralized institution, while the crowds of individuals in front of the supper huge architecture were subsumed and integrated into the grand institution, creating a sense of impersonality, detachment and dispassionate. In 2008, WANG Guofeng initiated his North Korea project and visited the country for four times on invitation from the North Korean central government since 2011. In his North Korea series, WANG Guofeng captures the panorama of the isolated society with minute details, covering the grand signature buildings, mass political gatherings, students, factory workers, hospital physicians, farmers and families of different social status. He perfectly processed these photographs in super high definition pictures with all the symbolic codes and visual details in order to make the audience to read the implied stories. The huge dimension and super high-definition of the images and the digital manipulation further enhance the visual shock.

The “News” series were the manipulation of journalism photos on the events of global significance. These pictures were filtered either by the state power and various news organizations before they are presented to the public. WANG Guofeng manipulated these pictures and inserted text in each picture to challenge the viewers’ established perspectives and rethink the distance between the appearance and the truth. While the “Memory” series raise questions on the implications of the memory of the past historical events to the contemporary world. WANG Guofeng thinks that “human beings are often in a state of amnesia, so history repeats itself again and again.” The “Relativity” series is abstract photography works, which explores the speed and the moving objects, creating a sense of time compression, implying the real life and struggle in the contemporary social context. A new equilibrium is reached along with the confrontation between the static and the dynamic.

Throughout WANG Guofeng’s art practice, he employs diversified forms of medium, video, painting, sound, text and installation to express his conceptual mentality, trying to challenge the established stereotypes and build in-depth conversations with the viewers. His sound installation work, Voice of North Korea, is an extension of the communist themed works. WANG Guofeng thinks that sound is superior to visual works in that it has the penetration characteristic. Voice is important to express the human intelligence and wisdom. Sound of different country has different mainstream content, which “allows me to discover this vital connection between the visible and the invisible, between the appearance and the essence.” During 2004-2010, WANG Guofeng created stage installations and videos for theatres at various locations across the world, including Berlin, Dusseldorf, Geneva and Beijing.

WANG Guofeng has exhibited widely since 1999, including "The 2nd Seoul International Media Art Biennale" at the Seoul Museum of Art (2002), "When Latitudes Becomes Forms: Art in a Global Age" at Walker Art Center, US (2002), "The 6th Shanghai Biennale" Shanghai Art Museum (2006), "2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art" (2007) and “Aura & Post Aura” 1st Beijing Photo Biennial (2013). His solo exhibitions were held in Moscow (2007), Seoul (2010) and Hong Kong (2013).

WANG Guofeng, born 1967 in Liaoning provnice, northeast of China, graduated from Inner Mongolia Normal University in 1991 and studied Chinese painting and art history at Central Academy of Fine Arts during 1996-1998. He now lives and works in Beijing.