Zhou Tiehai

Zhou Tiehai's conceptual projects represent the artist's vengeance and attitude towards the self-absorbed art market. His work's power to amaze and provoke is the result of a host of strategies that mix antagonism with sincerity. The key ingredients that drive Zhou Tiehai's unsettling yet amusing practice includes appropriating classical imagery, generating ironic projections, proclaiming laconic yet heartfelt discourse and actively subverting painterly craft. He takes on the role of both artist and patron since many of his airbrush paintings are rendered by assistants under his supervision. He permits himself to 'play' with art's historical baggage by making paintings that are simultaneously self-aware and self-abnegating, virtuosic and pop all within a single canvas. He manipulates acclaimed magazine covers for his own purposes and articulates the notion of 'artistic agency' within current conditions of the art world and global economy. He makes self-promotional images that subvert the establishment notion of how artists should look and behave. Irony is indeed one of the main characteristics of Zhou Tiehai's art. Behind this irony lays true engagement and a subjective agency.

In the "Placebo" series, Zhou Tiehai replaces his subject's faces with a camel's head wearing fashionable sunglasses. He chooses classical portraits by da Vinci, Goya and Ingres as his models and enlarges them. Here too, the airbrush technique neutralizes or annihilates the 'inspired' brushstroke that is the signature of the European master as well as the individual brushstroke of Chinese ink painting. Zhou Tiehai spares neither tradition. A placebo is a substitute drug. It is an inert substance administered to stimulate the patient's psychosomatically induced curative effect. The placebo for Zhou Tiehai's praxis may be a constructed imagery. He makes critical art, but not in the conventional understanding of the term. While his works display a narrative that draws on contemporary topics and the mechanisms of artistic reception, he refrains from making any clear value judgments. Instead, Zhou Tiehai presents the viewer with a highly nuanced body of work.
Zhou Tiehai was born in 1966 in Shanghai, and attended the art school at the university there, where he also lives and works today. Zhou Tiehai has exhibited extensively internationally at acclaimed institutions such as The Whitney (New York), Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Kunsthal (Rotterdam), Shanghai Art Museum and Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin). Additionally, he participated in the 48th Venice Biennale, 5th Shanghai Biennale and 4th Gwangju Biennale.


Zhou Zixi

What is clear from all of Zhou Zixi's work is the degree to which he understands the profound power of place and its capacity to transcend the prosaic and evoke complex metaphors of history, memory and nostalgia. Zhou Zixi, both in his photographic work as well as in his paintings, regularly exploits the power of place to create images of uninhabited landscapes and estranged interiors that nonetheless generate a multitude of narratives. His work moves with startling ease between modern rooms decorated in bright primary colors to dark scenes that allude to the menacing weight of history. The common strand that runs through these two extremes is a powerful ideology that imposes itself on space. In a documentary series entitled "Sorry, I don't Know," Zhou Zixi takes a blown up photograph of a portrait of a man covering his face with his hands and posits it in random topographical spaces. His aim is to insert a contextless image into non-descript urban landscapes to trigger an unframed, unexpected visual encounter. The effect is not imposed on the spectator; on the contrary, the work offers a willfully ambivalent approach, open to a variety of interpretations.

Zhou Zixi's recent paintings oscillate between high art and kitsch, integrating a visual language that is particularly crude due to the superficiality of the environments depicted. What we see in these pictures are interior spaces filled with new consumer goods and other symbols of newly gained economic status. Rather than a calming notion of home, these paintings depict the external manifestation of China's chaotic development. These interiors evoke not awe but alienation, and the bright canvases and slick surfaces mirror the shallow world of consumerism. While his paintings might be a serious take on many of society's less attractive features, some images also pay surprising tribute to fellow artists: he references their work by decorating his imaginary interiors with their paintings, a practice that also underscores the sentiment that contemporary art is integral to the logic of consumerism and daily reality.

Zhou Zixi was born in Jiangxi province in 1970. He graduated in 1989 with a degree in literature. He currently lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Happy Life, BizArt (Shanghai, 2005), Interiors – Zhou Zixi, Büro Friedrich (Berlin, 2006), Under the Blue Sky, Grace Li Gallery (Zürich, 2006) and Under the Skin, Universal Studios (Beijing, 2006).  



Liang Yue

Liang Yue's photographic work negotiates the complex symbolic terrain between the exterior and interior, memory and reality and the public and the private. Her open-ended series of photos "Several Dusks" (2003) and "Lily's Afternoon" (2003) focus on moments drawn from ordinary life. Yet, a sense of foreboding pervades all of them. Liang Yue observes and elaborates on a uniquely ambiguous, uneasy assortment of public space in Shanghai, but with a detached viewpoint. The images are shot just before nightfall and are linked to an elusive time and the question of presence. The snapshot aesthetic makes it difficult to think of it as specific to a single place. The recurring images are a partial and instant view of the city. Her scenes of distant frenzy co-mingle possibility and problem, and leave the viewer uncertain about their specific mood and theme. The contrast between familiarity and strangeness is highlighted, and it is precisely this feeling of contradiction that makes her photos so fascinating and attractive.

Liang Yue's recent work also straddles the line between the inclusive and introvert. Photos from "In Summer" (2005) and "On the Bridge" (2006) are shot in the context of the poetic impossible rather than the metropolitan. Here, the images are devoid of human beings. What we see are empty streets and unoccupied interiors without any visual over-saturation. Liang Yue opens a vast realm of associations, therefore collapsing the notion of one specific and determinate meaning. The "Untitled Red" (2005) series is comprised of monochromatic red-tone photographs that, at a glance, walk a fine line between concreteness and abstraction. Yet, the difficulty in reading these images owes less to any inherent formal opacity than a kind of counterintuitive distancing effect.    

Liang Yue was born in Shanghai in 1979. She graduated from the Shanghai Art Academy in 2001. Today she lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York, 2006), China Contemporary – Architecture, Art and Visual Culture, Netherlands Photomuseum (Rotterdam, 2006), Restless – Photography and New Media, Museum of Contemporary Art, (Shanghai, 2006), Stop Dazing, BizArt, (Shanghai, 2005), Conceptual Photography from the Peoples Republic of China, Museum of Contemporary Art, (Denver) and China Now, MoMA Film at the Gramercy Theatre (New York, 2004).



Tang Maohong

Tang Maohong's unique and imaginary artistic approach is prominently displayed in his short animated video entitled "Orchidaceous-Finger" ("Theatrical Gestures") and the accompanying series of silkscreen prints "Orchid Finger" (2005), which are full of witty grotesquerie. The pieces are composed within circular frames, thus referencing traditional Chinese bird and flower paintings. Upon closer inspection however, Tang Maohong's various scenes of flowers, pagodas and mushrooms display an aesthetic that is as far removed from a traditional composed still leben as imaginable. Here, a surreal universe of people, animals and plants interact and converge in orgiastic and explicit scenes that carry a humorous legibility all their own. Tang Maohong showcases technical expertise combined with rich fantasy and sensibility that is transformed into his own distinctive and flamboyant touch.

Tang Maohong simultaneously references and undermines art history and popular culture. He has integrated a variety of visual elements and subject matters, producing works that inhabit the ever-blurred border between high art and popular illustration. His work is absurd, magical, humorous and confrontational, hinting that the juxtapositions of figurative objects might be more than just illusions. Tang Maohong's pictorial universe reflects not only a new subject – a psyche whose internal eclectic imagination is echoed in the environment of constantly flowing images – but also the inversion of out-grown traditions.

Tang Maohong was born in 1975. Recent exhibitions include Orchid Finger, ShanghART H-Space (Shanghai, 2006), Sunday – Tang Maohong's Solo Exhibition, Longhua Lu (Shanghai, 2006), A Lot of Ash – A Lot of Dust, BizArt, (Shanghai, 2005) and Asian Traffic Shanghai: Magnetism – Suspension, Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai, 2005).


Xu Zhen

Xu Zhen's extensive body of work includes photography, installation art and video reflecting his own individual experiences as well as China's socio-political stance. His work is informed by performance as well as conceptual art. The projects directly employ the body – his own or a 'social body' – as a signifying device, such as in the short video "Rainbow," shown at the 49th Venice Biennale. It features four tense minutes, during which an anonymous naked back belonging to an individual of ambiguous sex gradually changes color. Caesuras coincide with slapping sounds that strike the skin in a sudden and unexpected manner, contrasting with the clearly defined and anticipated flesh marks and intense sense of pathos that precede each smack. Xu Zhen's performances are rare, bold attempts at stretching definitions. His works exist in transitory moments: for the 2004 Shanghai Biennale, Xu Zhen set the clock in the museum's landmark tower ahead by ten times as a visual allusion to Shanghai's accelerated notion of time and of ephemeral structures in relation to manipulative powers – politically as well as personally. His recent video installation "8.848-1.86" (2005) documents an expedition to Mount Everest. Xu Zhen intended to remove 1.86 meters off the mountain's peak and transport it home to be exhibited in a large display cabinet. The video is a subtle and humorous commentary on China's official policy of reclaiming Tibet.

It is hard to think of another contemporary talent as prolific, playful and bold as Xu Zhen. His projects articulate frivolity and a persistent but always intense narrative that engages multiple subject matters. He shows a fascinating ability to subvert and rework existing ideas in his multiple roles as curator, artistic director and most importantly, artist. Over the past year, Xu Zhen has increased his output on all fronts, with positive results.

Xu Zhen was born in 1977 and graduated from the Shanghai School of Arts and Craft in 1996. He currently resides and works in Shanghai. Xu Zhen won the top prize at the China Contemporary Art Award (2004). He was invited to the 49th Venice Biennale and has since exhibited his works widely. Recent exhibitions include China Contemporary - Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmanns van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 2006), The Thirteen – Chinese Video Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York, 2006), Restless, Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai, 2006), Universal Studios (Beijing, 2006) and Xu Zhen, H-Space at ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2006).


Yang Fudong

Yang Fudong's films and photographs articulate multiple perspectives. His works investigate the structure and formation of identity through myth, personal memory and lived experience. Each of his works is a dramatic existential experience and a challenge to take on. His work is open-ended and inconclusive, therefore open to individual interpretation. Each film and video is about the human condition. He mostly portrays his own generation of individuals in their late 20's and early 30's, young people who seem confused and appear to hover between the past and present. Yang Fudong's work epitomizes how the recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness. This comes through in his choice of scenes and close-ups, in the characters he selects, the angles he films from, the relationship between foreground and background and the reconciliation of colors. On the fringes of both tradition and innovation, the films' bifurcation give them an anticipatory quality, as if something is going to happen but never quite does. Yang Fudong seeks through multiple vignettes to offer the poetics of place and people as an alternative to the prominent politics of power. Whatever occurs, Yang Fudong's film work and photography indicate that something remains untouched and unmoved, and perhaps all the more valuable for that reason.

Recent films include "The Half Hitching Post" (2005), "The Revival of the Snake" (2005), "Close to the Sea" (2003), "An Estranged Paradise" (2002), "Flutter, Flutter - Jasmine, Jasmine" (2002) and "Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest I-III" (ongoing).

Yang Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing. He trained as a painter in China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Starting in the late 1990's Yang Fudong embarked on a career in the mediums of film and video. He is among the most successful and influential young Chinese artists today.

Yang Fudong participated in the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005), 1st International Sharjah Biennale (2005), 1st Prague Biennale (2003) and 5th Shanghai Biennale (2004). He has also participated in shows at most acclaimed institutions such as Kunsthalle Wien (2005), MoMA Film at Gramercy Theatre (New York, 2005), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2005) and ARC/Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2003).



Feng Mengbo

Feng Mengbo was one of the first Chinese artists to develop an interest in global networking, the virtual world and their effects on human behavior. Since the early 1990's, he has worked at the intersection of painting and digital media. His interactive digital works "My Private Album" (1996), "Taking Mr. Doom by Strategy" (1997) and "Q3" (1993) have become part of the history of new media art in China and have been shown widely internationally.

Feng Mengbo's first two animations are based on popular picture books filled with violent imagery published in 1969 and 1972, respectively. The third animation, "The Technology of Slide Shows," derives from a book of that same title published in 1982 that documented methods developed by the People's Liberation Army for creating animation effects with slide projections, that, in the absence of television and film, provided a major source of entertainment during Feng Mengbo's youth. Likewise, four oil paintings "Street Fighter I-V" take their name from a widely popular computer game but reference particular aspects of Chinese history and political development: while characters in the painting resemble those from the original game, the characters in the painting are dressed in PLA uniforms. By inserting the Chinese military into the context of a violent computer game, Feng Mengbo indirectly critiques the system in power.

Feng Mengbo employs a new method of using the computer game as a critical tool for a recent series of photographs: for these works, he incorporates himself in a game that involves fighting and shooting some imaginary evil power. With a kill or be killed mentality, what is presented as a virtual game might very well be regarded as a mirror for 'real' people struggling against the rigid and omnipresent Chinese official organization of control. Feng Mengbo's photos have a slight antagonistic quality–urgent, almost hostile and often reaching witty heights of passive aggression. His works often are not what they seem; revealing much more beneath the deceivingly quiet surface.  

Feng Mengbo was born in 1966 and initially trained as a printmaker at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He began working withs digital in the early 1990's. Feng Mengbo has participated at Documenta 10 and 11 (Kassel) and held solo exhibitions at Holly Solomon Gallery (New York), Hanart Gallery, Haggerty Museum (Milwaukee), DIA Center for the Art (New York) and Renaissance Society (Chicago), among others.


Li Shan

Li Shan has undergone many stylistic changes throughout his unique artistic career but has never lost his individuality, emotive passion or ability to express internal sensibilities as well as external reluctances. The latest paintings in his ongoing "Rouge" series show mutant beings with butterflies as ears or as part of their faces. They seem to evoke the two contradictory strains often found in post-1989 cynical art: humor, laughter and self-mockery on the one hand and a cynical undercurrent of criticism, unease and strangeness on the other. "Rouge" is based on the principle of ambiguity. Li Shan attempts to find an evolving form that can address the problem of trying to extract the recognizable out of the unrecognizable, the fixed and clear, as well as the here and now, out of the anticipated, the inevitable and the yet unresolved.

Most recently in a series entitled "Reading" (2005), he creates computer images of various insects and plants. Closer viewing reveals that these insects are composed of human body parts like fingers, ears and genitalia. Through his uncannily realistic representation of interspecies insects, Li Shan questions the hypocrisy and lack of equality of human values in today's bio-scientific experiments. In terms of artistic style, he has adopted decorative methods similar to those of folk art, thus creating intimate, eccentric and oddly organic objects. Indeed, they seem to be mutant creatures from some hypothetical textbook on horticulture. The synthesized insects are constructions of digital imagery morphed into abstracted pictures. He raises the question of whether it is still possible to identify the boundaries between any particular organism and the world it inhabits. Li Shan's seemingly infinite variety of work reveals a sort of consistency upon closer inspection. All the works evoke a tension within the idea of the yet unknown. Finally, Li Shan manages to reconcile opposites in a way that leaves them un-reconciled, allowing viewers to reach their own conclusions.

Li Shan was born in Lanxi County in Heilongjiang province and graduated from the Shanghai Academy of Drama in 1968. Li Shan's work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions such as Painting the Chinese Dream: Chinese Art 30 Years after the Revolution, that traveled through America, ending at the Brooklyn Museum, China's New Art, Post 1989 Art Centre (Hong Kong) and the 45th Venice Biennale.


Ding Yi

Ding Yi's signature takes the form of a cross that is repeatedly and carefully constructed across surfaces. With this minimalist visual rhetoric, painting is not about illusion and the representation of objects. Instead, Ding Yi explores an abstract aesthetic through the systematic repetition and direct visual representation of the cross. Created by the layered intersection of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines across the surface, the paintings encourage the process of perception. Viewed from a distance, everything gradually converges. But viewed up-close, the subtlety of lines and color are vibrantly present. The paintings simultaneously refer to themselves, as paintings per se, and the reality around them that has only been distilled into grids and check pattern. Rather than creating a future reality, Ding Yi proceeds from a preconceived reality. He has conceptually integrated the conditions of the work's production and reception within the work itself. The abstract realism of the paintings have, especially, become an analysis of their conditions of production: the repeated motif of the cross has been re-made again and again, indefinitely and continuously for 18 years now. In his visual structures, he seems to be aiming for a meticulous systematization of simplicity opposed to the bombastic rhetoric of the literati tradition. Thus his crosses on the surface have been described as the embodiment of a deliberate "diffusion of pictorial illiteracy."

The formal method of abstraction and the variations within the repetitive patterns makes his work an intriguing case for the relevance of abstract painting in contemporary art. The consistent formal element of the cross in the work embodies a complex interplay of precision and dynamics. Like in Chinese calligraphy, Ding Yi's marks connote a certain correlation between the order of the universe and that of the human. The awakening of the individual in relation to the collective whole, present in Zen practices such as calligraphy, mirrors the role Ding Yi holds in his own art making.

Ding Yi is today regarded as the forerunner of internationally acclaimed Chinese abstract artists. He has exhibited widely, such as at the Venice Biennale (1993), Yokohama Triennial (2001) and Guangzhou Biennale (2002).

Ding Yi was born in 1962 in Shanghai where he works and lives today. He graduated from Shanghai Arts and Crafts Institute in 1983 and Shanghai University, Fine Arts Department in 1990.


Zeng Fanzhi

In the beginning of his artistic career, Zeng Fanzhi painted apocalyptic, expressionist images, thus manipulating modernist compositional effects to intensify his sinister version of reality. His representational work reveals the place of the unconscious and aberrant in the construction of experience. The large, clenched hands of his subjects are almost more conspicuous than their stereotyped faces and wide-open eyes. These images unfold as transcendent narrative resolution. Zeng Fanzhi's art simulates the fatigue of the contemporary experience: the rush to acquire and consume to the point of alienation and detachment. Working in idiosyncratic ways, he reminds us how effective art can be when it collapses these various experiences. He traces the eruption of the corporeal into the optical sedition of visual art.

Zeng Fanzhi's notorious mask series marks a turn in his aesthetics. All the figures in the series wear white masks fused so closely with the facial features that they are almost unnoticeable as face coverings. The masks nevertheless possess a peculiar, haunting power. Zeng Fanzhi paints oversized, gnarled hands, but the tragedy has been superseded by the disruption of order: his figures look anxious or fearful, as if they are victims of their own roles. Through the mask motif, Zeng Fanzhi expresses suspended reality. The mood of his work is subtle unsettlement: it often suggests some past violence, recent or old, from which we can unravel clues – but never completely understand. His paintings are much more than sardonically recycled imagery. Zeng Fanzhi delivers an art that feels new, not in its premises but in its brutal, yet refined vitality and constant renewal. His late images signify a shift in his focus from a formal concern with the representation of existential unsettlement to an interest in how we imagine ourselves interacting with nature. Still, in his newly developed landscape paintings, there is a notion of permanent escape – an attempt to inhabit the uninhabitable. These paintings are expressively abstract. Rendered in cool shades of pink, black and blue, they represent the tension of failed community and human loneliness. Within these large-scale images there is a notion of fragility and vulnerability; like an attempt to create a terrain of uncertainty that inhabits both characters and landscape depicted. The grand scale of the paintings lends them a certain suggestive and sublime appearance. When viewed, the paintings constantly seem to evolve and create new particular impressions. The images reflect a social reality that is made up of multiple signifying systems of which the landscape is just one.

Zeng Fanzhi was born in 1964 in Wuhan province and studied oil painting at the Wuhan Art Academy. Today he lives and works in Beijing. Zeng Fanzhi has exhibited widely at acclaimed institutions such as the Shanghai Art Museum, National Art Museum (Beijing), Kunst Museum Bonn, Santa Monica Art Centre, (Barcelona) and Art Centre (Hong Kong).


Yang Zhengzhong

The desire to challenge normative notions of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong's work. He is pre-occupied with China's intrinsic disharmony and extreme discrepancies and often touches upon taboos such as death and out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, employing image repetition and rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. Yang Zhengzhong became famous in 2000 with his half-hour video "(I Know) I Will Die" that features short sequences in which a series of people speak the phrase "I will die" to the camera. It is a disconcerting, soberly presented film that confronts the viewer with existential questions. Yang Zhengzhong recognizes that individual participation is the starting point for the transformation of perception. The video "922 Grains of Rice" plays with the interaction of the image of a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and a female voice counting the number of pecked grains. It is a humorous representation of the battle of sexes as well a comment on today's competitive behavior.

"Let's Puff" (4th Shanghai Biennale, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial) similarly starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and a busy street. Every time the woman breathes, the image of the street moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception are altered with the rhythm of the woman's breath. Yang Zhengzhong's playful videos are more than visual reflections; they are intelligent comments on the design of contemporary society. In a series of photos entitled "Light and Easy," he perceives the weight of urban changes as an exterior phenomenon, and literally depicts the process as a weightless factor, turning urban landmarks upside down. "Light and Easy" is based upon a conviction that the lightness of the isolated exterior or interior is a source of interesting material. The successful experiments the artists have executed to formulate connections are exciting, sincere and disturbing

Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhengzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993 and began working with video and photography in 1995. Yang Zhengshong's work has showed at major biennales and triennials including Venice (2003), Shanghai (2002), Guangzhou (2002) and Gwangju (2002).



Zhao Bandi

Zhao Bandi has made his reputation with staged scenarios where he and his toy panda play out everyday situations. Sometimes these consist of scenes from the life of a single father. Other times, the panda assumes the role of partner and lover. The panda is treated and acts as a 'real' character with a voice of its own that appears as speech bubbles in the photos. Zhao Bandi is brilliant at both playing with and being played by the media culture. The works are humorous, subversive, critical and seductive. Addressing the idea of media and mass reproduction, Zhao Bandi suggests that the boundary between image and reality has broken down. He emphasizes the images' potential for transformation, but also the power of the manipulating gesture: it takes so little to change the value and significance of an image.

Zhao Bandi's enchantment with the banality of modern life could seem condescending if not for the extraordinarily sincerity with which he goes about the entire theatrical set-up concerning his panda. Recently, the artist has paid special attention to state-endorsed public service announcements. These are often characterized by humorless didactic instructing people on how to behave in relation to everything from personal hygiene to SARS. Zhao Bandi appropriates, reverses and rejects the official message of these announcements. His striking images, which are presented as calendar pages, subway posters, light-boxes, and in other public places in Shanghai, mix the format of communist propaganda with the glossy advertisements that are spreading so rapidly in China. Interaction with Zhao Bandi's pieces causes one to be susceptible to the special pathos and the pleasure of the meaninglessness of it all.

Although Zhao Bandi's work frequently walks the fine line between fiction and reality, there are times when the two coincide: his video, "A Tale of Love Gone Wrong for Pandaman," is more than parody. In 2003, Zhao Bandi sued two media businesses for publishing his "Block SARS Defend the Homeland" poster without acknowledging his copyright. During the hearing, Zhao Bandi sits, forlorn, with his Panda. At the end, he reads as evidence a letter from his ex-lover, in which she explains why she is leaving him. She describes Zhao Bandi's relationship to the toy-panda as being sick, and denies that the SARS poster could have anything to do with his personality. Because of the letter (or despite it) Zhao Bandi wins the case. It's reality that produces fiction that produces reality.

Zhao Bandi was born in 1966 in Beijing, where he lives and works. He graduated from the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988. Since 1993, his works have been shown at international exhibitions, including the Sydney Biennale (1998), 48th Venice Biennale (1999) and 1st Guangzhou Triennale (2002). His project "Zhao Bandi & Panda" has been on public display in Shanghai, Milan, London and elsewhere.



Xue Song

Proceeding from a cultural logic that transforms antagonisms into collaborations, Xue Song's art finds expression in the negative space left behind: soot and ash are crucial elements, and the outlines of some of the figures in his images look as if they have been burned out. For him, ash is a reminder of fate and a symbol of rebirth. Fire plays a central role in Xue Song's work. It is a form of mourning. Time and again the artist elaborates on the fire that burned down his studio in the early 1990's, destroying all of his work to date, mainly oil paintings and calligraphy. The charred leftovers of pictures rescued from the ashes are used as fragments in the new works as a kind of memorabilia of past events. The collages become a tactile site of remembrance and reflection with traces of the fire unavoidably present. He produces scenes that pick up on traditional painting and calligraphy, but combine them, for example, with silhouettes of contemporary politicians. Xue Song is known for his innovative integration of contemporary elements with elements manifested in the collective cultural memory. He continues to invent new forms and reinvent those left by tradition. The approaches and explorations are inspired by traditional calligraphy, but are transformed. By collecting random samples of mass media language, including the revolutionary language of Mao and contemporary consumer culture language, Xue Song creates a kind of multi-sensory imagery. Scattered across the canvas, the visual juxtapositions are whimsical and inspired, proving that the artist possesses a keen eye for color and form.

Xue Song's distinctive collages represent the many different aspects of Chinese culture; he incorporates traditional Chinese paintings, ancient calligraphy, folk art, religious icons, legendary figures and historical photographs, effectively erasing categorical imperatives. His methodology is one of appropriation, manipulation and subversion in order to create a subjective universe that manifests his personal memories and loses.

Xue Song was born in 1965 in Anhui province. He graduated from the Shanghai Drama Institute, Stage Design Department in 1988. He resides and works in Shanghai. Xue Song has exhibited widely since his first solo-exhibition in 1999.  



Xiang Liquing

In a series of photographs entitled "Rock Never," Xiang Liquing presents a reaction to changes brought on by the transformation of space and its potential uses in the metropolis. Today, rigid high-rises have pushed horizontally structured communities into vertical organization of order and control. Xiang Liquing's photographic images with their grid-like facades of contemporary residential buildings scrutinize these symbols of architectural master planning. Yet, the strength of this work rests on its ambivalence: as one reads the pictures closely, one reaches the understanding that all individual, but similar, apartments serve as habitats for real people – the image shows the dichotomy between the public masses and private space. Architecture is presented as a carrier of social desire, in this case, the fantasy that collective residential architecture will lead to happiness regardless of whether individual needs are addressed. Despite the attempted leveling out of differences and the claustrophobic staging of the failures of the system, the work becomes paradoxically exhilarating. Focusing on the theme of sameness and difference, his recent series of photographs "The Second Generation" (2005) show the remarkable distinction between two people from the same family, only one generation apart, but belonging to and representing entirely different universes.

In addition to photography, Xiang Liquing also works with painting and sculpture. His abstract paintings express the same loss of center as his photograph series of nightmarish architecture. Within his paintings, no immediate or recognizable point of reference can be identified. His colorful composites may have dark and uncomfortable passages, but they are ultimately quiet celebrations of life.

Xiang Liquing was born in Zhejiang province in 1973. He graduated from China Academy of Fine Art, Oil Painting Department. Today he lives and works in Shanghai. Xiang Liquing has exhibited widely in China and internationally. His most recent exhibitions include China Contemporary Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam 2006) and Restless, Photography and New Media, Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai, 2006).



Lu Chunsheng

A particularly generative aspect of Lu Chunsheng's work is the way it breaches the boundary between documentary and fiction. His conceptual and methodological coherence broadens and extends the inquiry into everyday life rather than merely illustrate it. Lu Chunsheng is now focusing on photography and video art. In his work, he articulates a surrealistic and neutral attitude in his videos. Using fixed camera positions, endless drawn-out shots and unprofessional shooting techniques, he documents human behavior in bizarre situations. But unlike many of his fellow artists emerging from the same generation, he does not focus on the alienation following an accelerated urbanization (including its stream of rapidly moving images and perplexed inhabitants). Instead, he has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations. The absurdity takes its form in a series of photographs entitled "Water" (2000), where a man stands motionless in a nightgown while growing seawater accumulates at his feet. This is documented in progressive stages without any recognizable narrative or explanation. Similarly strange, the large-scale photograph "I Want to Be a Gentleman" (2000) depicts nine men standing on tall plinths in front of a run-down industrial building like statues on display in a museum.

In a recent series of photographs entitled "Carlin," Lu Chunsheng strikes a balance between documentary realism and filmic aesthetic encounter. The quasi-documentary directness is created consciously with respect to a given site. These pictures are beautifully composed with a strictly demarcated horizontal line resembling traditional landscape photography, playing on foreground and background. However, this reading is subverted by a human figure riding a broom, as if it was an imaginary horse. The interpretive process is thus one of deferral or unraveling.

Lu Chunsheng graduated from China National Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture. He has exhibited widely in China and abroad. He resides and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include China Contemporary Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 2006), The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York, 2006), Out of Sight, De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, 2005), Double Vision, 1st Lianzhou International Foto Festival (2005) and Zooming Into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005) and subsequently in Mexico City and Shanghai.



Zhang Enli

Writings on Zhang Enli's work often focus on his subtle depictions of humanity and solitude. His early works revolve around the unavoidable transformation of the way of life, disturbance and the suffocating pressure that ensues, often threatening displacement. He sites dislocation as a primary condition of life, using it as a constructive backbone for a narrative praxis. Tales of permanent loss and subsequent retrieval are returned to the social and public realms to be tested for their potential to define contemporary conditions in the metropolis. Zhang Enli creates both a comforting and uncomfortable consciousness of presence. He illuminates the underside of society and his bold and unpretentious brushstrokes often reveal the grotesquerie of contemporary civilization.

He portrays details from ordinary objects that are often neglected or downplayed in conventional painting. His brushstrokes come close to traditional Chinese ink painting where every stroke on the canvas articulates parts that are significant to the whole.

Zhang Enli's mode of engagement entails photographically documenting his close environment. He then employs the photographs' claim on the real to develop his observation of his surroundings, though in a more intuitive and fragmented manner on the canvas. The circuitous route by which Zhang Enli comes to the image is typical of a methodology based on the experience of memory. It is not the repeated image that is central to each painting, but rather the process of reflecting on the events and objects that led him to it.

Accordingly, in his current paintings of trees, only fragments are revealed to the spectator. As in his other work, these paintings come across as 'un-finished' because they are semi-transparent and leave some of the white canvas exposed. This can be understood as the emergence of reality in the sphere of art, or, perhaps, vice versa.

Zhang Enli was born in Jilin province in 1965. He graduated from Wuxi Technical University, Arts and Design Institute in 1989. Today he lives and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include ShanghART Gallery at Art Basel (2006), Zhang Enli - Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Armory (New York, 2006), Infinite Painting - Contemporary Painting and Global Realism, Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art (Udine, 2006), Zhang Enli, Buero Friedrich (Berlin, 2005) and Human, too Human, BizArt (Shanghai, 2004).



Hu Yang

Hu Yang's extensive photographic publication "Shanghai Living" documents the living spaces of 500 families living in today's Shanghai. A selection of 100 of the images were first displayed at ShanghART Gallery and caused unforeseen public attention due to their rare and particular presentation of intimate and protected private spaces.

The featured photographs take on an anthropological and sociological approach that attempts to describe the dramatic changes of domestic living that occurred following the process of modernization and the Open Door policy. The photographs work as cultural documents as well as aesthetic objects that give us an almost voyeuristic view into a group of diverse private spheres ranging from migrant worker's dwellings to the domiciles of foreign diplomats and successful business people. The photographs are contextualized with captions that quote inhabitants from conversations with the photographer prior to the shoot. In these conversations, Hu Yang focuses on the same three elemental questions: How is your life situation now? What is your hope/wish? Finally, what is your biggest pain/trouble?

The "Shanghai Living" series works almost as an archive: all subjects and interiors, whether wealthy or impoverished, are equally treated. One might naturally question the objectivity, authenticity and honesty of the documentary photos. As with any other visual art form, the intentions and stylistic strategies are, ultimately, always a subjective choice made by the photographer. Nevertheless, these intimate portraits do not come across as staged settings, and unlike exterior views of the city, they are spaces that are otherwise closed to the public. Finally, it is up to the spectator to manage and interpret these contemporary iconographies of modern Shanghai living spaces.

Hu Yang's recent exhibitions include China Contemporary, Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Photomuseum (Rotterdam, 2006), Sixth International Photography Month in Moscow: Photobiennale 2006, Moscow House of Photography, Shifting Views: Chinese Urban Documentary Photography, Michigan University (2005), Re(-)viewing the City (2005), Guangzhou Photo Biennale, Guangdong Art Museum (2005) and Hu Yang, Shanghai Living, ShanghART Gallery, H-Space (2005).



Hu Jieming

Hu Jieming is one of the pioneering artists of digital media and video installation art in today's China. One of his main focuses is the co-existence of the old and the new, a theme he constantly comments upon and questions with a variety of media including photography, video, digital interactive technology and architectural juxtapositions with musical comments.

In his highly acclaimed photo-manipulated series "Raft of the Medusa" (2002), he references Theodore's Gericault's allegorical 1819 painting by the same title. The historical painting serves as a mytho-poetic memorial to the 150 souls lost onboard the raft after a fatal shipwreck that spared only 15 survivors. The painting subverts the 19th Century heroic aesthetic of historic paintings by portraying a society in collapse. Hu Jieming draws a parallel between the social demise portrayed in Gericault's "Medusa" and the Cultural Revolution. Hu Jieming's "Medusa," thus, is more than just a reference to the past; the photos allude to today's excess consumerism and advertisement imagery. Hu Jieming also juxtaposes pictures of today's youth engaging in hedonistic acts with monochrome grey pictures of suppressed people in traditional Mao uniforms. These compositions made of images appropriated from different socio-political realities signify a strong critical engagement with both history and the present – it is a concern that ranges beyond pure private considerations.

Hu Jieming was born in 1957 in Shanghai. He graduated from Shanghai Light Industry College, Fine Art Department in 1984. He resides and works in Shanghai. Hu Jieming has exhibited widely. Recent shows include The Thirteen: Chinese Video Art Now, P.S.1 (New York, 2006), Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, (various cities in the US, UK and Germany, 2005-2005), Zooming into Focus, National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005), In their 40's, ShanghART Gallery, H-Space (2005) and 5th Shanghai Biennale: Techniques of the Visible, Shanghai Art Museum (2004).



Geng Jianyi

A main focus of the extensive oeuvre of artist Geng Jianyi is the issue of individual identity, that is, his own personal position within the context of the collective. Despite his diverse aesthetics and media (including activist street art, oil painting, installation art and ink drawing) the artist never ceases to explore the questions of the 'self' in today's world. His work can be described as 'after-images' that continuously veil and unveil fragments of the individual. Geng Jianyi demonstrates an intense concern about self-awareness and the multitude of forms by which the individual is expressed and represented. In a series of portraits entitled "Face" (2001), the artist uses photographic prints of portraits that he almost entirely covers with ink. Using a traditional Chinese brush technique, Geng Jianyi only lets spots of light shine through. The semi-transparency of the portraits corresponds to a notion of withdrawal or abandonment of individuality. These images oscillate between total abstraction and recognizable facial features. A similar approach is undertaken in an earlier series of portraits titled "Impossible to Name." Here, the artist combines oil on canvas and paper-cuts to signify the diverse layers that constitute our beings and the shifting ground that threatens our existence into dissolution. Other works revolving around themes of existential identity include "Who is He?" (1994) and "Proving the Existence" (1994).

In the exquisite series "Water," the artist is concerned with phenomenon that appears and disappears. The pictures are composed using light-sensitive paper to experiment with ways of directly capturing images from natural forms without using the lens of a camera. The black and white photos resemble the meta-physical abstractions of traditional ink and wash. Here, nature revolves around notions of pantheism and the sublime as understood by Kant. According to Kant, "the mind feels itself set in motion in representation of the sublime in nature. The point of excess for the imagination is like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself."

Geng Jianyi was born in Zhenzhou, Henan province in 1962. He graduated from Zheijiang Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department. Today he lives and works in Hangzhou. Geng Jianyi has exhibited widely since his first show in 1989. Exhibitions include Zooming into Focus, Beijing National Museum of Art (2005), 5th Shanghai Biennale: Techniques of the Visible, Shanghai Art Museum (2004), Geng Jianu - Useless, BizART (Shanghi, 2004), 4th Gwangju Biennale (2002), Living in Time - Contemporary Artists from China, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, 2001), Inside Out: New Chinese Art Exhibition, Touring Exhibition (China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, 1998) and Cities on the Move, Secession Vienna (and other locations,1997).



Ji Wenyu

Consumerism becomes the new belief system in Ji Wenyu's color and detail saturated images. Revolution, market economy and art history are alienated and stripped of their original meaning. In his emblematic paintings, Ji Wenyu contrasts communist propaganda imagery of workers and peasants in heroic poses with Western brand-name product logos. Here, political propaganda enters new alliances with Western marketing's promises of happiness, which the artist (not without irony) holds up against the public of a radically changing China. By juxtaposing images and iconographies of the stereotyped oriental and the assumed occidental, Ji Wenyu questions the politics of cultural representation. Ji Wenyu's universe is full of surprises and references to both political occurrences and cultural productions, focusing on the precise distortion of today's spectacle society. De-contextualization enables the artist to take a humorous stand, as if to attempt a hyperrealism that surpasses the reality of the daily lives we lead in the midst of detached floating images. Irony is key to Ji Wenyu's work. Between the use of mimesis, critical distance and narrative, Ji Wenyu's work achieves a rare balance between surrealism, pop and precision. Revisiting the dichotomies of modernist painting, he manipulates the boundaries between figure and ground, to produce an intense and comic baroque kitsch universe.

Refusing to bind himself to a single medium, he seems to consider art as an exploration of strong imagery, humorous intelligence and formal precision. This suggests a true integration of art into the everyday life represented by his expressive multiplicity and eclectic approach. In his images and amorphous sculptures, created in collaboration with his wife Zhu Weibing, Ji Wenyu blends ingenuous and aesthetic objects that make his works compelling.

Ji Wenyi was born in Shanghai in 1959. He graduated from Shanghai Art and Craft School, Decoration Department and Light Industry College in 1980 and 1988, respectively. Ji Wenyi has participated in numerous exhibitions including Here the Scene is Better, H-Space ShanghART Gallery (2006), Dressing Up before Going Out, Museum 52 (London, 2006), Infinite Painting, Villa Manin - Centre for Contemporary Art, Passariano, Codroipo (Udine, 2006), Original, Shanghai Original Art Center (2004) and Money and Value, the Last Taboo, Expo 02 (Switzerland, 2002).



Tang Guo

Tang Guo has been able to create a very particular universe within the traditional media of ink painting and calligraphy that only lately has been expanded to include photography. In his ink paintings on canvas, color is the basic element out of which a rigorous and poetic pictorial proposal is made. Although at first glance it may suggest certain similarities with abstract expressionism, this soon gives way to meticulous and warm compositions. Ranging from the miniscule to the large, Tang Guo's abstract paintings of monochromatic fields change gradually from profound blue to intense shades of red. Tang Guo shows a clear interest in the relationship between color fields that mix and interact, expanding their own limits. The beauty of the work arises from the harmonious color gradations, achieved by the laws of ink painting. Tang Guo has a predilection for repetition, and while the works depend on one another, they function better independently. Each brush stroke is unique and in zealous search for simplicity despite the reduced color range.

In his black and white photographic series "Water" and "Human Territory" (2000-2002), a certain poetic nostalgia is articulated; all the photos are devoid of humans. Whereas photographs from "Water" are abstract, blurred and subjective, "Human Territory" applies the tradition of realist and "objective" photo documentary.

Tang Guo was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu province in 1955. He studied at Nanjing Art Academy and Central Academy for Arts and Crafts, Beijing from 1986 to 1989. He resides and works in Nanjing. Selected solo exhibitions include Tang Guo, Zhu Qizhan Art Museum (Shanghai, 2006), Human Territory, ShanghART H-Space (Shanghai, 2005), Water, ShanghART Gallery (2002), Long Life, La Galliavola (Milan, 2000), Tang Guo New Works on Paper, ShanghART Gallery (1998) and Paintings by Tang Guo, Guofu Museum (Taipei, 1996).



Pu Jie

In his artistic practice, Pu Jie attempts to use fragments of collective memory as well as his own personal experiences to compose a narrative of a contemporary way of existence in the shadow of China's recent past. Avoiding trappings of both nostalgia and amnesia, he references instead life in the rapidly expanding urban metropolis and its oscillating imageries of eroticism, political propaganda and ancient myths. Monochromatic colors in red, yellow and blue dominate his large-scale paintings. The compositions are not subject to the classical central perspective, but consist of collage figures and texts that are noticeable as vast bases in favor of other images, usually painted with striking contours. The different layers of imagery are brought together in the picture by the unifying aesthetic expression, which is a blend of pop and comic strips. Pu Jie's works comment on a variety of themes that he conjures up in dynamic and intense scenes. Here, he underscores illusory aspects of the mediated day-to-day reality of a rapidly changing society. Pu Jie juxtaposes seemingly contrasting narratives and memories as an attempt to show the fragmentary, ever-shifting and therefore incoherent nature of life.

Focusing on the urban context, Pu Jie also touches upon the tabula rasa approach that is so prominent in urban development, where the destruction of entire neighborhoods is cause for severe social implications. "Modernization" (2001) features a plastic replica of the Pudong Tower in Shanghai, which he subsequently submerged in water or splashed with alcohol and set on fire. The end result were ashes of a city in ruin.

Pu Jie was born in Shanghai in 1959. He graduated from Shanghai Teachers University, Fine Art Department in 1986. He resides and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Mahjong, Kunstmuseum Bern (2005), City of London Festival, Royal Exchange (2003), The Dream of the City by the Sea, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Hamburg, 2003) and Speed of Culture, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2002).



Shen Fan

Shen Fan's artistic production consists primarily of two-dimensional abstract painting. These images portray the minimalism of Western abstract painting, but are fundamentally different. The Chinese version and approach has been coined with the term Maximalism. This practice attempts to establish a balance between the spiritual and the material components of the process. Shen Fan's work can be regarded as incomplete and fragmented records of daily meditation: he repeats the same patterns and forms in order to remove individualism or eliminate any desire for self-expression, aiming for the distillation of pure spirituality. This serialization and monotonous process constitute the characteristics of Shen Fan's Maximalism.

Shen Fan's paintings come across as visually pure and harmonious compositions devoid of any extravagant or superfluous elements. For Shen Fan, the surface of the canvas becomes a field where color plays a key role. His images consist of monochromatic (and often primary) colors. His works are tactile compositions created using a palette knife, which makes for a restrictive work structure. The result is a ambiguous space in which shapes resembling geometric diagrams are then filled out with beautifully simple and repetitious ornamental figures. With rare radicalism, Shen Fan always accomplishes compositions full of discipline, rigor and perfection. Shen Fan disregards representation or narrative. He instead emphasizes the pure, clear expressive methodology of the process of production and its serialization. Shen Fan therefore creates a self-referential, or perhaps 'pure' world that follows an inner logic. Silence becomes a powerful concept that addresses the intimacy between the artist's mind and material society.

Shen Fan was born in 1952 in Jangyin, Jiangsu province. He graduated from Shanghai Light Industry Institute, Fine Arts Department in 1986. He resides and works in Shanghai. Selected exhibitions include Chinese Maximalism, Millenium Art Museum (Beijing, 2003), The Paintings of Shan Fan–Pioneering Abstraction from Shanghai, Goedhuis Contemporary (New York, 2002), Shanghai Abstract Art Group Show, Liu Haisu Art Museum, (Shanghai, 2002), Metaphysics 2001, Shanghai Art Museum (2002) and Shen Fan–New Works, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2001).



Wang Guangyi

Wang Guangyi's aesthetic entails sampling a variety of imagery (such as well-known propaganda images and photographs) and fusing them with corporate brand names in order to undermine their original purpose. In combining ideology and advertisement, he criticizes the apparent 'truths' of both. In short, he brands Socialist Realist iconography and symbols with a different contradictory discursive system. The paintings are meant to highlight the fact that despite no overt relationship, the principal goal of both is to convince the population of the authenticity and singularity of its products. The artistic strategy produces imagery on different levels, both symbolic and real, visualizing and actively counteracting key economic paradigms and their social and cultural implications.

Wang Guangyi employs a variety of media including installation art, mixed media imagery and sculpture, but it was his series of oil paintings entitled "Great Criticism" that earned him fame. On a surface level, these pictures resemble the technique and aesthetics of Warhol's pop icons, but their inherent contents are extremely sophisticated fusions of different belief systems, namely socialism and consumerism. Fusing the two opposing phenomena, negates both. Wang Guangyi combines disparate and seemingly disconnected images, attempting to show how inexorably entwined they become when interpreted through a consensual frame that, then, domesticates and homogenizes them. From this perspective, the works embody themes of equation and acquisition, a transecting of capital and empire in the commodity.

Wang Guangyi was born in Harbin, Heilongjiang province in 1956. He graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department in 1984. He resides and works in Beijing. Selected exhibitions include Wang Guangyi, H-Space ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2006), Mahjong, Kunstmuseum Bern (2005), Chine, le corps partout? Museum of Contemporary Art (Marseilles, 2004), Alors, la Chine?, Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2003), The First Triennial of Chinese Arts, Guangzhou Art Museum (2002) and 45th Venice Biennale (1993).



Shi Yong

Shi Yong's work embraces modernization and the ideology of consumerism as the basis for self-imagination and creation. He has produced a series of photo-based works around the concept of the ideal Shanghai citizen. It is an ongoing multifaceted project that explores images of consumption, commodity and the development of the culture industry. One series, entitled "Made in China–Welcome to China" (1999), consists of hand-painted plaster models of a young businessman in a Mao suit, sunglasses, briefcase and waving. The image of the ideal citizen used for the statue was the outcome of an Internet project through which Shi Yong asked volunteers to vote for the ideal way of looking. The individual now transforms the identity of his or her self by following the logic of commodity market surveys. It is a composite image that Shi Yong has repeatedly used in other pieces such as "Longing For" (2000) and "You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It" (2001). The iconic figure is morphed through the agency of the marketplace.

Recently, Shi Yong has focused his attention on large-scale installations and architectural models imbued with an absurd twist of humor. Most notably, his mixed media installation "Flying Q" is of a UFO built with the purpose of opening up the sky. The flying object comes with no additional explanation, but might be recognized as just another signature vision of and interventions into the imaginary world of Shi Yong. His subversive approach pokes fun at architecture based on rules and pre-established schemas. Shi Yong fabricates a colorful and ironic architectural structure that is at once a parody of serious design and its synthesis. In short, his work is an amalgam of Shanghai's eclectic 'anything goes' attitude towards architecture.

Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from Light Industrial School, Fine Art Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong has exhibited widely since the early 1990's. Recent shows include Follow Me!, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), Second Guangzhou Triennale, Guangsong Museum of Art (2005), Zooming into Focus, China National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005), Felicidad Indecible, Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico, 2005), The Heaven, The World, ShanghART Gallery & H-Space (Shanghai, 2004), Shanghai Biennale (2002), Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002) and Bienal de Maia (1999).



Yu Youhan

Along with Li Shan and Wang Guangyi, Yu Youhan is one of the main artists of Political Pop to emerge in the avant-garde movement in the 1990's, fusing Chinese iconography and Western artistic expression. His work has had a major impact on the cultural scene, and has influenced and inspired a generation of younger artists. Yu Youhan's earlier work is directly influenced by his experiences during the Cultural Revolution, with prominent imagery of political propaganda and socialist realism. Before constructing this pictorial universe, he practiced an informal and materialist abstraction. His work unravels and reconstructs the meandering histories of this diverse environment. As reflected in his pictures, he employs an aesthetic methodology that blends and exceeds seemingly contradictory visual traditions. Yu Youhan earned fame with his highly acclaimed Mao portrait series. He decorates the iconic images with flowers that blend into the foreground and background. It is not only a decorative gesture, but also an attempt to humanize the late leader.

Yu Youhan has recently shifted his artistic approach in search of a new paint language and subject matter. His latest work consists of landscape paintings that resemble pastorals of a forgotten utopia. Yu Youhan's extensive oeuvre combines multiple perspectives and investigates the structure of cultural identity in China through an ongoing exploration of various pictorial techniques. His paintings remain ubiquitous, yet intriguing.

Yu Youhan was born in Shanghai in 1943. He graduated from the Central Academy of Art and Design, Beijing in 1973. He resides and works in Shanghai. Yu Youhan's work has shown widely nationally as well as internationally. Recent exhibitions include Study Practice, Shanghai Gallery of Art, (2005), Chine, le Corps Partout?, Musee d'Art Contemporain (Paris, 2004); Museum of Contemporary Art (Marseilles, 2004) and Landscape of Yi Mengshan, H-Space ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2004). He has also exhibited in the 22nd Sao Paulo Biennale (1994), 45th Venice Biennale (1993) and 1st Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 1991).


Wang Youshen

Wang Youshen's art is characterized by a focus on the influence mass media exerts on our thoughts, emotions and actions. For example, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, which are determined by value judgments, if never explicitly stated. In his photograph-based images, Wang Youshen uses selected press images as well as private photos as the basis of his investigation into the various functions and values of images, their truth content and modes of employment. Having worked as a magazine editor, Wang Youshen is particular concerned about the power of print imagery. This is directly reflected in his work "Newspaper" (1993), where he uses newspaper as raw material, thus covering entire walls and printing them directly onto fabric for clothing. In a similar project called "Newspaper Advertising" (1993), he covered the Chinese wall with newspaper. By reusing the printed media in an entirely new context, Wang Youshen subverts and questions its original meaning.

In a recent, almost monochromatic series of photographic work entitled "Washing" (2003), his points of departure are two original photographs documenting tens of thousands of Chinese buried alive by Japanese troops during the Second World War. One of the pictures depicts a scene where some remains from the burial site are washed off. Wang Youshen uses the symbolic act of washing to reflect upon the question of washing that can be understood both as a form of catharsis and as a form of amnesia; a cleansing of memory. Wang Youshen's visual experiments mirror his intent to develop a form of artistic communication that recognizes the necessarily fragmentary nature of any media. He therefore rejects the notion of reducing the work to a single coherent narrative.

Wang Youshen was born in Beijing in 1964. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He resides and works in Beijing. Recent exhibitions include Zooming into Focus, National Art Museum of China (Beijing, 2005), Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, (US, UK and Germany, 2004-2005), 5th Shanghai Biennale: Techniques of the Visible, Shanghai Art Museum (2004), Washing – New Works by Wang Youshen, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2004) and 45th Venice Biennale (1993).


Song Tao

Song Tao's latest film noir "Three Days Ago" (2005) is a poetic venture into the nighttime terrain of Shanghai. Along the way, the viewer glimpses certain recurring leitmotivs, such as a child playing hopscotch, a brightly lit highway tunnel and a haunting building. An electronic score that plays throughout lends the film a flowing rhythm all its own. The loop-like structure encourages the viewer to focus increasingly on the atmosphere rather than over-all narrative plot. The elliptical repetition also builds suspense that seems to accumulate towards the end. The dramatic scenes appear eternally; the urban nightly journey could take place anywhere, anytime. Song Tao presents a slice of reality as kinetic views of urban space and fragments of memory. His vision is one of documenting and creating atmospheres – he is not concerned with staging grand truths.

His own life, that of his friends and the immediate surrounding metropolis serves as his material source, as exemplified by "The Floor" (2003), a project that spanned six months and culminated in nearly 20,000 photographs of daily life in Shanghai. He selected about 3,000 photographs to create his floor-piece that was eventually mounted at the ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai. Another similar project that presently constitutes the floor of the gallery is a photographic patchwork of the artist's own lawn that he photographed meticulously throughout three changing seasons. These acts of recollecting come close to early conceptual and minimalist art approaches, that is, an incremental and repetitious alteration from one piece of work to the next.

Mirroring Song Tao's pre-occupation with 'ordinary reality' and the direct confrontation between the viewer and the artwork is his involvement with Bird Head. His work with the collective takes the form of a photographic survey of contemporary urban life in the metropolis and is a direct response to its immediate scenery of constantly changing circumstances and events. Here, the artistic practice becomes inseparable from real life: "Our hearts are filled with huge amounts of love and sadness" (Bird Head Statement, 2004/2005).

Song Tao was born in Shanghai in 1979 and graduated from Shanghai School of Art and Crafts in 1998. He resides and works in Shanghai. Song Tao has exhibited widely. Recent shows include China Contemporary, Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 2006), Restless, MOCA (Shanghai, 2006), Bird Head, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2005), Guangzhou Photo Biennale, Guangdong Museum of Art, First Lianzhou International Foto Festival: Double Vision, Culture Square Lianzhou (2005), Zooming Into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum (Beijing, Mexico City and Shanghai, 2005), Shanghai Constructions, Shanghai Gallery of Art, (2005) and Light as Fuck! Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004, National Museum of Art (Oslo, 2004).



Wu Yiming

Wu Yiming's concern with individual identity is so astutely portrayed in his works it is perhaps not an overstatement to say that that he has found, within portraiture's limits, the most adequate aesthetic style. A combination of individuality and anonymity informs his subtly poignant paintings. The figures depicted are presented as both intimate and mythic. The most significant feature of his characters is a paradoxical notion of blankness: his portraits lack facial features and any indication of individuality, alluding to an escape from or intrusion into an unwanted reality. Identity isn't necessarily visible, and the paintings oscillate between recovering a lost image and shattering an illusion. Like ambiguous gestures, the images change as one negotiates them. Drawing an analogy to the present state of Chinese society and its unprecedented and frenzied development followed by estrangement and identity-loss is perhaps too shallow a reading. Instead, the images suggest a strong engagement with themes of cultural amnesia and a tabula rasa approach to history. In trying to erase certain aspects of cultural heritage, people gradually lose a sense of belonging to the world. A distorted past manifests itself as a faceless haunting power. Juxtaposing contemporary and mythic elements in his paintings, the artist suggests that art and aesthetics might be the platform to re-contextualize past occurrences within current contexts.

In further developing themes involving catharsis; that is, the embrace of trauma via art's curing effect, Wu Yiming has recently engaged in creating significant sculptures of Joseph Beuys suggestively entitled "RED Beuys" (2006). Beuys' lifelong mission was to 'cure' the German people of the of trauma of their recent history of pain and atrocity. Wu Yiming alludes to similar ideas of art's purpose and possibilities.

Wu Yiming was born in Shanghai in 1966. He graduated from East China Normal University, Fine Arts Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Focus: Wu Yiming's Works On Paper and Sculpture, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2006), Time Ex, UMA Gallery (Hong Kong, 2005), China – Contemporary Painting, Fondazioni Casa di Risparmio, Bologna (2005) and Dreaming of the Dragon's Nation, Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, 2004).


Wei Guangqing

The red wall is a visual motif that appears throughout Wei Guangqing's work. He extends the practice of the double take by encouraging the viewer to look again or reconsider familiar narratives and styles of images. The series "Red Wall" takes as its point of departure the Chinese moral classics The Virtuous Words with feudal maxims of ethical morals and doctrines. Appropriating this ancient illustrated book, he replaces the original text with the dominant visual symbol of a red wall, maintaining only the original illustrations and manipulating them with the flat pastiche technique of pop art. The red wall becomes the commanding feature in the basic composition and serves as a new projection screen for a new social order and new moral standards. The representation of the wall plays on the various connotations that this symbol embraces: a border, inclusion and exclusion and as protection from foreign intruders and influence. The deceivingly simple work draws on ancient philosophy while borrowing Western pop-aesthetics. The wall becomes an ambiguous symbol because it is literally distanced from the nation it purportedly serves. In subverting the ancient classics, Wei Guangqing does not fully abandon tradition, but reminds viewers to recognize their entwined meaning in mainstream contemporary culture – in consumerism, politics and religion.

By combining opposing concepts such as past and present, the figurative and the abstract, he represents these as fluid, heterogeneous concepts that cannot be viewed in isolation. Wei Guangqing employs references to historical philosophy and post-modern pastiche of different visual images. With no immediate way to decode these cultural compilations, Wei Guangqing's paintings work like informative fragments with no easy way out.

Wei Guangqing was born in Huanshi, Hubei province in 1963. He graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Department of oil painting of in 1985. He resides and works in Wuhan. Selected exhibitions include Made in China–the Paintings of Wei Guangqing, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2005), China–Contemporary Painting, Fondazioni Cassa di Risparmio (Bologna, 2005), Mahjong, Kunstmuseum Bern (2005) and First Triennale of Chinese Art, Guangzhou Art Museum (2002).


Zhang Ding

Unapologetically voyeuristic, Zhang Ding's film installation "Pry" (2005-ongoing) explores the relationship between the viewer and the viewed, superiority and inferiority, exploiter and exploited. This is done with rare sensitivity and non-judgmental loyalty towards featured destinies, all of which share a common denominator of difference. These differences are manifested sexually, religiously and politically, and often with severe consequences to the protagonists. The installation, which also incorporates photographs, belongs to the tradition of socially conscious documentary film. Most touching and thought provoking is the story of a middle-aged transvestite including burlesque anecdotes about his homoerotic, at times excessive, experiences. His story reveals a life that society would criticize as degenerate. Yet, Zhang Ding presents it as a life lived with both joy and pain. The featured characters' narratives speak for themselves without resorting to stereotypical or condescending commentary. Zhang Ding's intention is almost celebratory in allowing the audience a rare glimpse into lives of human beings that have, against all odds, managed to maintain their pride and self-respect. The tone of the different films differ slightly; some are more introspective than others. The one trait all interviewees share is their stigmatized identity and being in a film that serves as a venue for them to finally have a voice equal to speak out against the vast majority. The series will eventually consist of seven films. So far, three have been completed.

Zhang Ding's interest in the personal stories of anonymous individuals can be seen in his archival project on missing persons. Here, he appropriates the visual imagery of missing people by photographing missing person flyers, often spotted in nearby public spaces. He paradoxically stresses the uncertainty while manifesting the image of the lost person through a second representation. It is an archival impulse that reveals an interest in memory, loss and personal narratives.

Zhang Ding was born in 1980 in Gansu. He resides and works in Shanghai. He graduated from North West Minority University, Oil Painting Department in 2003. He studied at China Academy of Art, New Media Art from 2003 to 2004. Recent exhibitions include Big City and A Lot of Ash –A Lot of Dust, BizArt Center (Shanghai, 2005) and First International Biennale of Contemporary Chinese Art: MC1 (Montpellier, 2005).