Visit our ESSAY section to read Barbara Pollock's article on Chinese artist Chi Peng, published today.
'Westerners first encountering the works of Chinese contemporary artists often strain to find references to ancient China - temples, calligraphy, porcelain and red lanterns - as if these artifacts will make the art works more genuinely Chinese. In reality, many Chinese contemporary artists do not find their roots in an ancient past, but look to more recent popular culture for their inspiration. Both sides - western viewers and Chinese artists - want to appreciate the other, yet the visual conversation is fraught with confusion and misreadings. Misinterpretation is the order of the day, even as Chinese contemporary art soars in popularity in the international art world.
Chi Peng is both a product of this state of confusion and a master at generating new conundrums of his own. Born in 1981, he is quite young yet already an internationally recognized artist, known for his surrealistic photographs, altered and invigorated through the glories of Photoshop. He is too young to have been influenced by the Maoist period and far too modern to be interested in Ming furniture. Yet, perhaps in his complete assimilation into present-day China, he is the most Chinese of all artists, showing us with his photographic trickery the realities of living in contemporary Beijing.'
To read Barbara Pollock's essay in full click here.
Barbara Pollack is an artist and writer based in New York, covering contemporary art since 1994. A contributing editor to ARTnews, Pollack also writes regularly for the New York Times, Time Out NY, Art & Auction, Modern Painters, and Art in America, among many other publications. She is currently writing a book about China's contemporary art scene with a grant from Asian Cultural Council. Despite her complete lack of an art history background, Pollack lectures extensively and is a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
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