Portfolio
Wang Keping
Wang Keping was born in 1949 in China.
He has lived and worked in Paris since 1984.
Chinese artist Wang Keping began carving wood as a self-taught artist at the end of the 1970s, after having been, during the cultural revolution, successively a peasant, a worker, then an actor and screenwriter for national TV. Thanks to the Beijing Spring, he participated in the Democracy Wall and organized in 1979, the first unofficial artistic exhibition ever to take place in China on the gates of the Beijing Museum of Fine Arts with the group of artists The Stars (Xingxing / 星 星).
He hangs his manifesto sculpture Silence there, depicting a face/mask with its right eye closed and mouth blocked, to express the lack of freedom of expression and the censorship in place. Thus, the sculptor placed himself at the forefront of the national artistic avant-garde while embodying opposition to the post-Mao communist regime.
Exiled in France in the 1980s, he developed a very free practice of wood sculpture, in line with Chinese artistic traditions and those of the cultural revolution. In France, Wang Keping abandoned political themes in favor of the representation of female bodies, of entwined couples, and more rarely of birds. Starting from trunks fallen in the forest as well as branches brought back to the workshop, he works with a chainsaw, a blowtorch or a carpenter’s chisel. Since then, in France, his host country, he has created a work internationally recognized as one of the strongest and most original contributions to contemporary sculpture.
It was in 2021 that Wang Keping started his first collaboration with the MiniMasterpiece gallery. The “Eclipse” jewel-sculpture, in ebony and 18k yellow gold, is signed and numbered, and accompanied by a certificate from the artist.
Asked by Esther about his experience with jewelry, Keping responds:
“Very often for women, jewelry is a sort of trademark, it allows them to stand out from others. The jewelry that I create are like small sculptures suspended around the neck. To move from a large house to a smaller, it requires a lot of time to rearrange everything, sometimes you even have to get rid of certain pieces of furniture. Make a small sculpture, it seems easy, but the hardest thing is to stand out from the others, to have its own style and its own language.”
He adds these few very poetic verses:
Jewelry
Women like to wear jewelry, like adding a few grains of salt to their soup.
Women wear jewelry to attract the attention of others and remind them not to just focus on their body and face; I am much more valuable than that.
Jewelry worn around the neck indicates a person’s taste, personality, identity, wealth and status.
Perhaps it is also a form of intelligence, a mark of culture or a keen artistic sense.
小首饰
女人喜欢戴首饰，像是在汤里加了几粒盐。 女人戴首饰是要引起别人的注意，并且提醒别人，不要只注意身体与脸面，我还有更多的价值。 首饰挂在脖子上，最能显示一个人的趣味，个性，身份，财富与地位。 也许还有智慧，文化，或者独特的艺术修养。
王克平
Wang Keping, spring 2021
Pendant in ebony and 18k yellow gold
6,3 x 5 x 1,7 cm
Edition of 8 + 4 AP
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2024
Ring in 18k yellow gold
Diameter 3,5 cm
Edition of 8 exemplaires + 4 EA
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2024
Ring in Sterling silver
Diameter 3,5 cm
Edition of 8 exemplaires + 4 EA
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2024
Pendant in Sterling silver
Diameter 7 cm
Edition of 8 + 4 AP
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2024
Pendant in ebony
and 18k yellow gold
6,8 x 4 x 2 cm
Edition of 8 exemplaires + 4 EA
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2024
Pendant in Sterling silver
Diameter 7 cm
Edition of 8 + 4 AP
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2021
Pendant in ebony
and 18k yellow gold
7 x 3 x 2,4 cm
Edition of 8 exemplaires + 4 EA
Édition MiniMasterpiece, 2021
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
13 x 5,5 x 2,5 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
14 x 5,5 x 4 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
15 x 5,5 x 3 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
15 x 5,5 x 3 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
14 x 5,5 x 2,5 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
13 x 5,5 x 5 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
13 x 5,5 x 6 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
15,5 x 5,5 x 1,5 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
15 x 9 x 4 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
15,5 x 5,5 x 2,5 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece
Collier-pendentif, 2022
Ébène et fleur galvanisée et
dorée or jaune 18k
12 x 7 x 3 cm
Pièce unique pour MiniMasterpiece