Faye Wei Wei’s Ethereal Igurative painting began back in 2016, when she graduated from the Slade Fine Art school in London. Especially on Instagram, her self-image and romantic vision – filled with patterns of hearts, lovers, flowers, bows and rosary – introduces a fantasy painter who is effortlessly afraid of external judgment.
After Wei Wei’s situation in New York and the famous performance of Galerie Kandlhofer in Vienna, Wei Wei participated in Yale’s MFA program last year. During a recent visit to her studio in New Haven, Connecticut, the floor was covered with book pages and image references, as well as a pair of fluffy guts, a imagined city, doll beds, other objects of discovery and clay models of inspiration. “They don’t have to be any confusion or obstacles, they can pass,” she said, talking about confusion, which is twice the portal for improvisation and transformation.
In one of her latest paintings Calcium star (cut off Romanesque ear)From 2024, the flow of confetti emanates from above the three floating ears, emitting heavy figures in the naughty, undressing and ambiguous state between swaying and fear and fear. The ears are loose studies of Romanesque sculptures, which in Wei Wei’s poetic imaginations are invitations to whispering secrets. “I love architectural creatures, and formation is space and not just objects,” she said. She added that the ear also quotes scenes from Wong Kar-Wai’s film. Mood love (2000). “I have this idea [in the movie] Dig a hole in the tree and whisper. I like the subject of hidden information through storytelling. ”
Telescope made of champagne glass (2024) features a static figure surrounded by miniature architectural forms that look like lace floating on vibrant orange planes. “I’m using a sponge to try texture in this piece,” Wei Wei said. “I think paint is almost like substances with its own value, such as music. It has a deep emotion.”
Faye Wei Wei: Moth with soft eyelids2025
Photos by Manuel Carreon Lopez
Expressive brushes filled with musical energy (realistically, the rotating legato melody is scattered in many of her paintings. “In music, your structure is like a sequence or action, and I think the painting can reflect it.” Theater on the moon (2024), the long flowing trumpet bells appearing in clouds, and it becomes a storm, as if digging out the interior space of the instrument while activating its sound charge on the canvas.
People feel confused and frustrated when they look at Wei Wei’s work. It immediately envelops you from the perspective of the performer who is on the instrument, and the perspectives of the listeners who are staring at the same performance on the stage. In this way, her style evokes a multiverse where painting gestures such as music can emotionally play emotions from perseverance to melody, whimsical to melancholy, and a little dated, to a refreshing modernity.
