Nicholas Robinson Gallery is pleased to present its first exhibition of paintings by Wei Dong.

Most of the works depict a single hybrid female figure, naked or semi-naked, and with legs that culminate in a fish tail. These paintings, whilst rendered in the artist's superbly fastidious realist style, are generally more fanciful and self-reflective than previous bodies of work, which tended to focus on multi-figure compositions satirizing life in China during the Mao era.

Unlike most other Chinese painters, Wei Dong's technique and composition are classically academic, but in a Western sense - they most often take their cues from seminal artists of the Western canon, including, but not limited to, Botticelli, Parmigianino, Ingres and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Though obviously fictive, the ‘fish girls' are painted in order to appear compellingly real, as they are rendered in a fashion that defies idealization. They are often contradictory - faces are beautiful, breasts are ripe, and yet the disturbing passages where flesh becomes fish illustrate a physicality that is convincing yet alien. The demeanors are serene but the physical corruptions are menacing.

A fully illustrated catalogue, accompanies the exhibition with an essay by Lilly Wei, and with an interview with Jeffrey Uslip, in which the artist discusses his work in detail:

"The references or scenes themselves are not as relevant as some may think...There is no story here. The fish girls are both the subject and the tool. They are fantastical and do not exist in reality...a normal scene appears mysterious, fish and girl merge into one, animal instinct is humanized, and human desire is animalized.

I grew up in a military academy, right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. People around me wore the same uniform in which gender is simply invisible... No one would talk about sexuality, as if it was too dirty and evil...I was first introduced to figurative nude paintings from the Western art books my father kept secretly at the house. I started to make up my own stories...but these stories are for my own fantasy world and not to tell... When I grew up, I had this irresistible desire to reveal the stories that were intended for myself to others. In a way my obsession with female sexuality and attentiveness to flesh are ways to explore my own desires as well as cultural and social constructions."

PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: 535 West 20th Street, New York / 212 560 9075 / nrgallery.com