Hei Wei

An abstraction of insecurities and surface personalities webbed into paint and canvases, Hei Wei perfectly personifies the inner mind and thoughts of humans. Born 1987 in Anhui province of China, Hei Wei studied painting at the Fine Art Academy in Florence, Italy and then in Milan. He believes that each artwork is supposed to be a visual image of sensations and a binding of energy.

A common theme to Hei Wei's work is the build-up of layers of desire that are concealed behind shields of meticulously curated blocks of colours, representing the human nature of hiding behind a mask. While it can become simple to focus on the surface and ignore the limitlessness of a human mind hidden under these surface masks, Hei Wei's work discloses the inner spirit and untangles the mysteries that lie beyond the surface.

Hei Wei manages to walk around the extremities and through his investigation of shapes and colours, he goes from beauty to ugliness, certainty to doubt and from exteriority to interiority. His work is a visual image of his psyche, from his observations of the world around him carefully put down on a canvas in a rhythmic and pulsating way.

From disfigured bodies to realistic figures hiding in anonymity, Hei Wei intertwines his shapes, scribbles and signs to create a chromatic balance and an intricate network that forces his audience to think beyond the imaginable. His work often is often represented as a medicine for a distorted reality as he titles his work as psychotropic drugs. It is a tornado of chaos and confusion that runs like a visual image of a psychotic episode. Hei Wei is an international award-winning artist who has been the recipient of the Laguna Prize at the Venice Arsenal. 

Hei Wei currently lives and works between Italy and China.