About Gold Brick

Wang Kaifang
New Year’s Day, 2013

To me, brick is a cell for human civilization. Its humble origin never shadows its versatility. Bricks are used for animal farms, human residences and sacred temples. They form pavements, paths and milestones. Like a person or a book, a brick has its personality, emotions, and, above all, life. While some bricks are content to be just bricks, some others might be passed down from ancient times and become legends.

To me, gold comes from afar. Superior to any other earthly metal, it emits the eternal warmth of the stars. About 4.5 billion years ago, gold came to the earth as the legacy of the Big Bang. It has been inlaid on the pinnacle of glory by all the ancient civilizations. Ranking top of the Five Elements gold symbolizes power and wealth, brings luck and blessing, while it, at the same time, bears vanity and vulgarity. Man will have to grow up to capture its true essence.

To me, man is not life indigenous to the earth. Different from all other species, we human beings have extraordinary vision and creativity, and we owe our existence 1.5 million years ago to the chimpanzees and the Deities, while the latter expect us to fulfill our bestowed mission. Unfortunately, we have abused our divine creativity with crude, self-righteous, yet destructive recklessness. It is most imperative that we should cherish the wisdom of creativity and observe the Tao of love. Before the earth is getting bleak and desolated, let us learn to care and create with warm hearts.

The moment the destinies of man, gold and brick dawn upon me, I feel the momentum, the impact. I know we have melted into one, by our collective energy and aspiration. I am seized by a burning sensation of warmth, piety, devotion, reverence and strength. Artistic creation is no longer a mere whim of passion. It becomes a form of redemption, a means for cultivation, and, ultimately, a path to bliss.

That is what the Gold Brick series is all about. To conform to the international standards of contemporary art, I have employed top-notch digital technologies available in China and have tried to avoid the subjective sentiments often found with traditional crafts, in the hope of objectively express the reverence for the nature and the reality and visualize the evolution of mankind. I wish to communicate to you my pleasure, my passion and my yearning, all through the energy of the works. Each piece of the Gold Brick series will become a bridge to link you and me, which is not only aimed to fulfill our desire and ambition to turn an ordinary brick into an eternal legend of gold, but to improve our perception of the multiple feelings and emotions in such a pluralistic world. It is beyond my gratitude for your care, your interpretation and your opinion, which will help enliven the present exhibits and inspire my future creations.

It is the intrinsic nature of man to appreciate gold, to care about each other, and to seek love. To me, the ultimate goal of art is to improve our perception so as to create a beautiful future, not just for ourselves, but for all the living creatures on the earth.

Gold Brick: The Sound of Love
Beijing Forbidden City, 2012