WANG GUANGYI

Great Criticism - Sinopec (Lot 2446) is unusual in Wang Great Criticism, focusing not on Western luxury brands but instead on a Chinese state-owned petroleum and petrochemical enterprise. As such, Sinopec represent something else entirely, the rise of Chinese national corporations that have become commonplace in the global economy, as well as of the Chinese people's embrace of their distinct approach to a state-regulated market economy. The "Little Red Book", the ubiquitous text of the communist era, is held firmly and piously by the featured couple, an industrial labourer and farmer girl, united in their enthusiasm for this new tome. Such use of iconic propaganda figures and symbols conjure the fundamental, Utopian dream of the revolution, yet by juxtaposing this imagery with the Sinopec brand, instantaneously appropriates the Utopian dream into the new and unexpected territory of China's post-Mao transformation.