cynical Chinese Art
Far from the usual clichés, contemporary Chinese art is a reflection of modern China, its ambitions and its contradictions. The artists express in their works the many paradoxes that characterize the current Chinese society: the economy's phenomenal growth made possible by cheap labor from rural, urban sprawl, dehumanization and empty the spiritual world, dazzling wealth, inequality increasing the effects of censorship ... bubbling does not leave indifferent artists, often with that look half amused, half cynical develloppement on their country.
Art Food Luo brothers
Paradoxically this review amply benefit to artists themselves. Rising prices of works by the young Chinese generation is rapid and the number of investors continues to grow. It often takes only a few years for a Chinese artist a tenfold price increase, reaching a record like Xiaogang ZHANG Guoqiang CAI or to name a few.
Chinese artists, not devoid of humor "black" communicate their despair meet their changing society. Their views often play on the ambiguity that lies between the output and the attraction of socialism for capitalism critique with new freedoms but also the constraints it creates.
And several artists to confirm a healthy grin that the pill does not pass. The architect-designer of the famous Beijing Olympic Stadium (the Bird's Nest "), Ai Weiwei wanders sometimes shirtless Tian Anmen, the word" fuck "written on his chest.
Another Chinese artist has followed throughout the day on the pavement ants, tracking his movements with a zeal absurd.
It has become fashionable these days among the local performers: taunt Mao under his huge portrait.
The performers are rampant and in Beijing. Without banners or leaflets. Just out of happenings and metaphors. Black humor against arbitrary power. It is a festival in the true sense of the word. The Open Performance Art Festival welcomes hundreds of artists and spectators. Fauna connected, coming from around the globe and assembled into this mythical wasteland in north-east of Beijing: the 798. A place hard to describe, both in scale (640 hectares) by its contradictions (both underground and squat big trade fair). Via Amour China
But how that exist in China, where the motto is "get rich"? ! There is little choice but to show its success with ostentation, or when, for the most numerous, avoid losing face, shut up and go to ground, disappearing into the crowd. Photo of artist Li Wei. More pictures of Li Wei.
Success Story in Chinese sauce
These are the new aspirations of Chinese youth, a contemporary mythology of devotion to trade in the glamorous facade and comfort to the U.S.. Work Wang Niandong.
Painting Zhong Biao
Sculpture Xiao Yan
is what we watch and denounce the very curious photographs of Chinese artist Xu Yong .
The photographer has partnered with Na Yu a former call-girl who means the artistic act regain its moral and physical integrity by taking the upper hand in situations that are echoes for her humiliation. All this in a cold and a blueprint that incorporates the irony and absurdity tinged with morbid.
In staging a cold mathematical artist staged his modern society in spaces and transposes wan ritual space of the new places everyday business. The offices are transformed into an altar, the tuxedos are the uniform of an army impersonal and rigid, violent in its passivity and transparency.
In opposition to these men, a young woman, naked or dressed just a pose, model unflappable in postures can not be more clichéd.
The photo of the flag is very symptomatic of a mutation, where the Maoist past gives way to a Marilyn Chinese, blonde and naked, an icon far more attractive in today's China ... muse that broadcasts to much of real sensuality, emotion or even a wind of liberty.
And then there are those - in this big billion people - who feel lost, ignored, forgotten, invisible. A bit like the young Chinese artist Liu Bolin performer who hides and blends into the background and eventually make them body, becoming a limited vision, an invisible fingerprint before a bulldozer arrogant, powerful and old locomotive, or other sets of contemporary China.
The art of camouflage, made without special effects pictures, but with "simple" paint on the body.
Urbanization is probably the most important trend in contemporary China and a major topic of concern for Chinese artists. Wang Guangyi oils, for example, evoke Western pop art, but they use images of workers, peasants and soldiers, typical of the Cultural Revolution for criticizing the commercialization and globalization as foreign products flooded into countries. Ci-cons installation the artist Liu Jian Hua.
cynical realism Yue Minjun 岳敏君 (1962 -)
Yue Minjun is one of the most influential artists of the school of Cynical Realism China. His work is characterized by his own laughter as a base image for his paintings, sculptures and installations.
The characters give the impression that they have lost all rational judgments. There is a parallel with the theme of mad Flemish painters of the Renaissance such as Bosch and Bruegel, who were satirizing the ignorance of the Church and religious control over the people.
Minjun's paintings want to laugh. It depicts scenes of life absurd to ridicule society. His work is rooted in a deep political disillusionment. It discusses the concepts of civil liberty and individual autonomy with a dose of cynicism Technicolor. Minjun acknowledges that this cynicism has the power to manipulate human behavior through intimidation or terror.
Sale at the bayonet!
At the bayonet or "enforcement" is the title of this satirical picture representing convicted underwear hilarious and completely before a firing squad just as happy. At its auction at Sutherby in 2007 this table has reached the price of 4.2 million euros as the work by placing the most expensive in the history of contemporary Chinese art
Yue Minjun's paintings depict contemporary anxiety and expresses the violence of our society. Halfway between the cartoon, the pop aesthetic and the illustration, its grotesque images are heavily loaded with acid colors as in Figures smiling. Yue Minjun is shown in galleries around the world.
faces in China by Zhang Xiaogang (1958 -)
Zhang Xiaogang is famous for its series Bloodline, stylized portraits and often monochromatic (black and white) from Chinese families. The poses are reminiscent of the Chinese tradition of family portraits of the Cultural Revolution, and the compositions of European surrealism. Critics have hailed his paintings as "portrait of modern Chinese soul."
He paints family portraits enigmatic and fixed, a heavy atmosphere, tone gray and black, crossed by a discreet but disturbing blood-red line, the recurrence of a boy's face reddened, a ray of light that magnifies virtually unknown faces.
Children of the Cultural Revolution, he probably drew his inspiration from his own family experience of this tragedy. "On the canvas, the faces seem calm like water. But underneath lies a huge emotional turmoil," says the artist, for whom the psychology of the Chinese today is always linked to that of the time. For him, the series of works titled Blood line: the big family from start 1990s, and inspired by old family photos, also questions the place of the individual in the family and modern Chinese society. This red line unites individuals, it is also a link that no one can undo.
His artistic career over the past decade has been staggering. He became the darling of art dealers and collectors in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe and the United States. Hoisted to the top spot of contemporary Chinese artists, he always creates the event in the auctions of contemporary Chinese art. Anne-Laure Fournier via Blogg.org.
Laughter Yellow Fang Lijun 方力钧 (1963 -)
Fang Lijun is an artist who belongs to the younger generation of contemporary Chinese avant-garde. He is probably living Chinese artist best known, and also one of the most expensive.
Fang Lijun is known for its very large canvases dominated by the heads of Chinese men with shaved heads, close up, often open mouths.
The anguished faces are like a cry a burst release, a strong identity at the same time on the bottom of helplessness and disarray.
Liu Ye (1964 -)
Liu Ye's paintings are at once tinged with humor, sadness and a hint of irony, a bit out of time.
Ling Jian (1963 -)
Shut ....
Small unusual beauty of Zhang Peng (1981 -)
Strange and not very reassuring works of young artist Zhang Peng, but they have the advantage of immersing ourselves in a world of displaced orbits close to the Gothic Lolita, by addressing the sensitive issue of Chinese children, both pressurized and adored by parents and education.
To be continued ....
