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:
This evocative painting by Guo Wei Title:d Body presents a stark rear view of a solitary female figure bending forward in black undergarments, set against a minimalistic interior backdrop. The artist uses thick brushwork, subdued tones, and raw spatial contrast to evoke emotional unease and psychological intensity.

Artistic Style and Influences:
Guo Wei’s expressionist realism, characterized by gestural brushstrokes and tonal flatness, distills the human form to its most psychologically charged state. His practice draws influence from both Chinese social realism and Western existential portraiture. The distortion and cropping of the figure reinforce a sense of tension, surveillance, and vulnerability.

Historical Context:
Created in 2004, this painting emerges during a period when Guo Wei was addressing themes of adolescence, gender, and identity in urban China. These works often critique the commodification of the body and the psychological toll of societal conformity, especially within a system experiencing rapid transformation and ideological flux.

Provenance:
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

Condition and Conservation:
The artwork is in very good condition. The paint layer is intact and stable, and the canvas shows no signs of deterioration or previous restoration.

Artistic Significance:
Body exemplifies Guo Wei’s ability to capture an atmosphere of introspection and social critique through painterly reduction. The ambiguous gaze of the subject—turned away yet exposed—mirrors the psychological ambivalence at the heart of Guo’s oeuvre. This work serves as a powerful meditation on self-perception, bodily autonomy, and the dissonance between public identity and private self.