Sextually confusing yet extravagant as the red light district, is the first impression I got after Wang Tao’s art exhibition. I fully immersed myself in his paintings in the exhibition hall after the audience had all gone. Those cold reds, the despiritualization of the people in the scenes, the decadent state of the body, the dark background with muddy lights, and the loveless and heartless sexual scenes seem to contain The cold violence... each one made me think.
A solo exhibition of paintings, with dozens of paintings placed in a professional art exhibition hall, will make you think from the author's creative ideas and academic perspectives. However, what if these paintings were placed in bathing centers, hotels, or even the red light district of Paris...? What would happen to their business? I doubt that anyone could still enjoy the pleasure from sex after seeing Wang Tao's paintings since his paintings made your beautiful impression of sex suddenly get reduced to an animalistic need and the helplessness of masturbation. It is a kind of venting without pleasure, and it is a kind of pain and exhaustion after venting.
From the current Chinese society's increasing pursuit of materialistic value orientations, spiritual emptiness, and the pursuit of pure physical pleasure, it has brought about disrespect for divinity, rejection of love, and lowering of spiritual heights... Is Wang Tao trying to dismantle our era? Are you blaming the devil inside people? Or is it a healing plan for the physical and mental harm that I have suffered as a result of being involved in it? We're not sure, but the value of his work is that it provokes thought.
Cheng Xiaobei
Director of Shangyuan Art Museum, Poet and Art Critic
