"FedEx No" belongs to the set of twenty lithographs from "Wang Gaungyi´s Rhythmical Dichotomy", which comes as a limited edition of 165 rare books. By combining depictions of workers with logos of famous commercial brands, such as Coca-Cola and Rolex (“corrections” of the political slogans he had painted in his youth), in this collection of lithographs Wang Guangyi synthesized the schematic propaganda of two seemingly opposed systems. Though Wang Guangyi’s work has erroneously been associated with Chinese Political Pop, in reality, one of the main themes of his art can be found in its relationship to the transcendent. Juxtaposing revolutionary images with consumer logos, Wang’s canvases provocate with their duplicitous message, highlighting the conflict between China’s political past and commercialized present. He shows that the terms of a contradiction can complete each other. It was a prescient synthesis, among the first depictions of how communism and capitalism have come together and thrived, to be virtually interchangeable.
“ The Cultural Revolution [1966–76] started when I was in elementary school, so I didn’t really understand what was happening. But I remember seeing a lot of posters with big heads. This interested me very much. „