Visitors at Island: Wang Yi Solo Exhibition, going on at Jiushi Art Museum from Jan 18 to Feb 18 in Shanghai. [Photo / chinadaily.com.cn]

Wang Yi is featured at the first exhibition of the year at Jiushi Art Museum in Shanghai.

The Shanghai-based artist was winner of the John Moores Prize in 2018, a prize launched in 1957 at Liverpool, UK, aiming at "creating an opportunity for artists to be judged solely on the merits of their painting".

"It's time I summed my work after winning the prize," the 41-year-old artist told the media at the opening on Jan 18. The exhibition will go on at Jiushi Art Museum, on the 6th level of House Roosevelt on the Bund till Feb 18.

With the title of Island, Wang's solo exhibition features 12 oil paintings, including his John Moores Prize-winning piece, Staring, which was also the first piece of his River and Boat series. Six paintings of the series are on exhibition, and the other six are from the Red Riding Hood series. There are also ten encaustic paintings and 30 or more watercolor sketches on paper.

The River and Boat series have been much inspired by Brazilian writer Joao Guiaraes Rosa (1908-1967)'s short story The Third Bank of the River, Wang said. Like the hero in the story, Wang saw the river and the island as safe havens for those escaping from society, and created different scenarios of recluses hiding in the boat or the jungles on a no man's island.

Wang was fascinated by the dark side of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, and his Red Riding Hood series are visual interpretation for the tale from a grownup's perspective.

British curator and critic Lewis Biggs provided academic support for the exhibition. Biggs recalled his first impression of Wang's artwork at the John Moores Prize, which shows a human figure sitting on a rock in the river, with a lion in the foreground staring at him.

A sense of wonder arrives in the painting, with the moment of recognition when two worlds – animal and human – that have nothing to do with each other connect and become part of the same 'picture', Biggs said. It is an analogy for the distance between the viewer and the painting and the wonder when the two connect.

These new paintings on exhibition "are sensuously made, his colors are warm, and his lines have sinuous curves. Physically, they invite us to touch them and to be touched emotionally by them," Biggs said. "But the psychological content suggests that we should be alert to the moral of the tale: keep our distance, stand still and stare".