Miao Xiaochun 缪晓春

 

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Miao Xiaochun is a Chinese photographer. For the past decade, Miao has challenged the boundaries between traditional photography and the realm of new media. His most recent work involves the development of paintings from the canon of Western art history into faceless computer-generated models.[1] Born in 1964, Miao lives and works in Beijing.


Contents

[edit] Date & Place of Birth

Miao Ziaochun was born in 1964 in the Chinese canal city of Wuxi.

[edit] Education & Development

He graduated from Nanjing University in Jiangsu Province and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before studying for four years (1995-9) at the Kunsthochschule in Kassel, Germany. While still in Europe, Miao fabricated a life-size mannequin that resembled an ancient Chinese scholar bearing his own features. Upon his return to China in 1999, he used the figure as a photographic stand-in to express the shock of cultural difference abroad and the shock of societal transformation in China.[2]

[edit] Art

Miao Xiaochun, Opera (set of 5), mounted chromogenic print, 239 x 121.5 cm, 2003.
Miao Xiaochun, Opera (set of 5), mounted chromogenic print, 239 x 121.5 cm, 2003.

Originally a painter, Miao has created black-and-white and color photo compositions that underplay the robed sage’s physical status in the larger surroundings, while they maximize the incongruity of his still, thoughtful presence. The scholar appears (apparently in a faint) at the feet of a female tourist on the Great Wall, alone in a cable car riding over the urban sprawl of today’s Wuxi, and receiving treatment under a piece of futuristic medical equipment. With his elegant gown and thoughtful demeanor, he seems to incarnate a culturally rooted wisdom that is lost to the more frenetic, generically modern world around him.[2]

Miao Xiaochun, Capital, photograph, 94.5 x 30.3 inches, 2003.
Miao Xiaochun, Capital, photograph, 94.5 x 30.3 inches, 2003.
Many of Miao’s images are panoramic views, some photographed as such and some assembled digitally out of discrete shots that echo the multiple perspectives and timeframes of traditional scrolls. Opera (2002), which shows people looking down into a zoo’s monkey area, combines several individual exposures into one seamless horizontal sweep, while Capital (2003) layers urban views vertically into a composite that soars from foreground shopper to traffic commotion to distant building top. Of late, Miao has experimented with much more radical computer-assisted imaging producing results like H20—Martyrdom (2006), a work that replicates Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo’s 1475 masterpiece The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, minus defined muscles, hair, clothing, color, and individual countenances. Apparently our high-tech present can effectively denude Western as well as Eastern tradition.[2]
Miao Xiaochun, H20--Study of Art History--Martyrdom, c-print, 214 x 170 cm, 2007.
Miao Xiaochun, H20--Study of Art History--Martyrdom, c-print, 214 x 170 cm, 2007.

[edit] Secondary Activities

Miao teaches Photography and Digital Media at his alma mater, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.

[edit] Auctions & Acquisitions

Miao's work has been sold by Sotheby's Hong Kong, China Guardian, and Borobudur Chinese Contemporary.
For Miao's auction record, click here.
For a list of collections containing works by Miao Xiaochun, click here.

[edit] Gallery Affiliations

Miao Xiaochun is represented by numerous galleries, including Alexander Ochs in Berlin, Walsh Gallery in Chicago,
in New York, and White Space Beijing.

[edit] Exhibitions

Miao held his fourth solo exhibition in 2009; entitled Microcosm, the show traveled from Arario Gallery, Beijing, to Alexanders Ochs, Walsh Gallery, and Osage Singapore. Miao has participated in many important group exhibitions, including The Revolution Continues: New Art From China at the Saatchi Gallery in London (2008) and Mahjong (2005).

[edit] References

  1. ↑ http://www.walshgallery.com/
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Richard Vine, New China New Art, New York: Prestel, 2008.

[edit] Links

88MoCCA - The museum of Chinese contemporary art on the web: Miao Xiaochun

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