China – Two Young Artists
There are hundreds of
wonderful young artists emerging in China who create work that is inspired by
the changing (developing) world around them and its demands on humans. He An and Chen Wenbo are two out of many talented
artists who are a part of Chinese Avant Garde movement and visual art’s
reaction to what is happening around them now.
He An is inspired by
Generation X’s mad, riches-seeking, dog-eat-dog dark side. In 2000 He An started working with
displaced young people from his country, after becoming fascinated by the role
of the Internet in the way it could connect just about anybody from any given
region of the world while preserving their anonymity. He An placed an ad on one of the servers asking young people to
respond if they wished to be interviewed and photographed for his series of
work. He asked them to try to define
”Cool” – He An promised he’d try to do whatever it took to help his subject
present how a particular ”cool” fantasy influences their life.
There are only three pieces
so far (Fashion: Wound), since money and resources are scarce – ironically it
is the same thing that stops He An’s subjects from having their goals of luxury living realized stops the artist
from being more productive. But. But the images are amazing and
powerful: in one image a person’s back
is marked by two – one much longer than the other – scars, wide and
raised. The subjects of the photographs
are young women whose ”cool” desire was to appear scarred. The scars reflect the internal torture of
having to have the subjects’ integrity sell out in order to pursue ”cool”.
Each picture is accompanied
by a text listing their statistics which is supposed to serve as a reality
check – despite fashion model-like poses the girls are everything but. The girls in photographs all come from
impoverished families and live in the cities working in entertainment venues
which is how they support their families and their own lifestyle that parodies
what they perceive as luxurious or ”cool”.
It has to be noted that the
He An himself still lives on day to day basis, still waiting for his own ”cool”
moment to happen where he will be recognized for his talent and will be able to
support his living through his art. In
China the most recognizable and most respected visual art medium remains oil
painting; new media is still too Avangarde.
But even the artists who use
”traditional” media such as oil paint have amongst them young painters who
aren’t afraid to react to the scary, developing world around them in a way that
is new and that leaves the viewer
shaken and reflective of his own reality.
Chen Wenbo began his Test paintings in 1996 and after some time started
to wonder about the relation of his medium to actual photography; he asked: If
painting is visual fiction, then where does the dividing line between reality
and fiction lie within the picture plane?
Chen Wenbo inspiration comes
from a belief that the world is evolving as a fake, man-made version of what is
natural. According to the artist
through his Test series Chen Wenbo perceives as the current mood of society,
and an exploration of fairy-tale youth and human’s desire to control it. Through his paintings of glossy-faced youth
-- speckled with paint or perhaps plastic… or perhaps evolving into plastic… or
paint – he also investigates human awareness of their emotions as well as their
natural senses such as sight and touch.
In order to show the fake world around (and inside) his subjects he
actually does covers the figures with the texture that reminds one of plastic.
Where youth meets high technology it precipitates a break out of the confines
of a conservative safety net by challenging their world strength of
imagination. The combination of
traditional media with the new media reflects well the snake-eating-its-tail
reality of people infusing technology infusing people.
hide
Home
