Wang Yuxiang: From RUFA to Shanxi Contemporary Art Museum

Wang Yuxiang (b. 1997, China) is an emerging artist who graduated in painting from RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts. In 2019, he won a prize that led to his work 'Scatola dei ricordi' entering the permanent collection of the Italian Embassy in Mexico City. In 2021, he had a solo show at Label201 in Rome, followed in 2022 by 'Ricchiamo' at Spazio Y and 'Parallelo Oriente/Occidente' at Mimmo Scognamiglio in Milan. In 2023, he created a site-specific installation titled 'Il conformista' at the Shanxi Contemporary Art Museum in Taiyuan, China. Wang's practice is organic, sparse yet dense with meaning, and tied to places and collective memory. He describes his process as slow and abstract, like fermentation. He works in a studio in Rome's Chinatown, on Via Conte Verde, a former washhouse transformed by artists Gianfranco Grosso and Sauro Radicchi. His first exhibition was at Nuovo Cinema Palazzo in 2019, a controversial occupied space. Wang cites neorealist cinema as a key influence, particularly Rossellini's 'Roma Città Aperta' (1945) and Antonioni's 'Deserto Rosso'. He currently has no fixed gallery representation and aspires to be a happy man, possibly at the Venice Biennale.