Chi Peng 迟鹏
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
Contents |
Date & Place of Birth
Chi was born in 1981 in Yantai, Shandong Province.
Education & Development
Chi graduated from the Digital Media Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2005.
Art
Chi graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, where he majored in photography and digital media. He enjoys the powerful and unconstrained style of digital technology, saying, “It is the only major that will not limit my thought.” Before graduation, Chi found his medium to express his mind. In 2003, Chi applied computer technology to fuse his naked body with landmark buildings in Beijing, creating a series of virtual mirages, named “Run.” In the digital images, a young naked man, without restraint and unafraid of rules and standards, is running among the huge buildings, which seem to stand for authority and capital. In a photographic series called “Sun,” Chi used a computer to blend images of him running with a background of red walls from the Forbidden City.
Chi’s art is to fix his naked image into an unreal space. In his photographic series, “Consubstantiality,” the character seems weak and lonely. Through those sexless features, Chi invents a mood of confusion. In his piece, “I Fuck Me,” two images of the artist “Chi” flirt with one another, under the desk in an office or in the telephone booth on a curbside. As Chi said, “This series reverberates with our generation, the '80s character. Many young people from the 1980s are the only child in their family. We have better economic condition and we more call for self-independence. The ‘80s is quite different from earlier generations. We never experienced the great reforms of Chinese society. We only enjoy a prosperous economy. ”
In his work entitled, “The Day After Tomorrow,” buildings in New York City come forth as a foreground, and landmark buildings in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong appear in the background. They come into an illusion of a new city from Chi’s subjective idea. Uncountable small naked people with wings fly to the shadowland. At the same time, Chi puts his eyes on the former New York World Trade Center, and he changes all the advertising boards in New York’s Times Square, replacing them with Chinese advertisements, including many elements of Chinese pop culture. For instance, entertainment stars such as Zhang Manyu and Yao Ming. Those small naked people are fast flying in the virtual world. “It is to imply that China’s status is rising at the center of the world,” Chi said. [1]
Emergence & Reception
Despite Chi's relative youth, his digitally manipulated images--most featuring naked human figures collaged into Brave New World contexts--have been sought by galleries in Asia, Europe and the U.S. Additionally, in the five years since the his international debut, examples of his work, both old and new, have been included in group shows at such major nonprofit venues as the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, the House of World Cultures in Berlin, the National Museum of Modern Art in Seoul, the Prague Triennale and the Essl Collection near Vienna.[2]
Right after the photo-based artworks with naked young artist appeared, they became popular. In 2004, this work became a favorite among curators and at international art exhibitions. The first overseas exhibition Chi participated in was “One to One: Recent Photographs from China,” at the Chambers Fine Art gallery in New York. The curator, Feng Boyi, said, “With changes in our society, people’s taste and way of aesthetics also change. Chi is representative of young artists. He begins his works with ego-cognition, from ego-virtualization to ego-identity. He represents the youth’s self-confidence and longing towards the future. It is definitely different from irony and self-mockery of recent Chinese Contemporary art.” In the same year, Chi’s work “Run” was presented at an exhibition entitled Visual Gallery at Phtokina that traveled through Germany, France and Austria. In “Run,” Chi presented some small naked people with the back to the audiences, running forwards with a red plane to a unknown destination. Some critics say Chi Peng may be using planes in his images to suggest that young, vulnerable people are under surveillance in the modern world. [3]
Exhibitions
For Chi's exhibition history, click here.
Gallery Affiliation(s)
Chi is represented by ChinaSquare and Chambers Fine Art in New York, White Space in Beijing, and Art Seasons in Zurich.
Acquisitions & Auctions
For Chi's auction record, click here.
References
- ↑ http://www.artzinechina.com/display.php?a=51
- ↑ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_97/ai_n42790560/
- ↑ http://www.artzinechina.com/display.php?a=51
