Artwork Description

Title: Body
Artist: Guo Wei
Date: 2004
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 15.7 x 11.8 in (40 x 30 cm)

Artwork Identification:
In this 2004 painting Title:d Body, Guo Wei renders a seated female figure atop a backless stool, captured mid-recline with one leg casually extended. The brushwork is loose yet confident, employing a pastel palette of soft peach and dusky mauve against a hazy grey backdrop. The figure’s simplified facial features and dynamic posture suggest both immediacy and ambiguity, embodying the physicality and emotional tension that mark much of Guo’s oeuvre.

Artistic Style and Influences:
This work illustrates Guo Wei’s expressive gestural language, where anatomical form is reduced to painterly suggestions, echoing influences from European post-impressionism to Chinese figurative modernism. His raw yet restrained brushwork preserves a tension between form and abstraction, intimacy and detachment. The subject’s sensual indifference and assertive pose contribute to an ambiguous narrative: playful, vulnerable, yet resolutely present.

Historical Context:
Created during the early 2000s, this painting is part of a body of work that marked Guo Wei’s shift toward personal and corporeal subject matter, responding to China’s expanding urban culture and shifting ideals of identity and representation. The early 21st century saw artists challenging state-prescribed narratives through portrayals of marginalized or unidealized bodies—especially those that spoke to gender, autonomy, and introspection.

Provenance:
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

Condition and Conservation:
The work is in very good condition. The canvas remains firm and well-stretched, with the oil surface retaining its color vibrancy and texture. No visible damage or restoration is noted.

Artistic Significance:
Body (2004) reflects Guo Wei’s sensitive engagement with the figure as a medium for cultural introspection and personal assertion. By framing the subject in an unguarded pose with softened facial traits, Guo challenges viewers to confront the nuances of identity, presence, and gaze. This painting is an eloquent embodiment of the artist’s ongoing exploration of psychological and social vulnerability through corporeal expression.