To understand the works of artists engaged in this practice, it is important to recognize the significance and specificity of the images they are using to fashion their work. Without this knowledge, the work of artists like Wang Guangyi may be reduced to a mere aestheticization of the experiences of the Cultural Revolution, a view which threatens to limit the discussion of these works to their formal elements, foreclosing more important ideological and historical questions that must be raised.

It is perhaps equally essential, particularly for Western audiences, to keep in mind the dominance that the Maoist regime held over visual culture and artistic production in China from 1949 to 1976, a control that reached a near totality between 1966 and 1972, during the Gang of Four’s reign [i].

Wang Guangyi’s paintings combine the ideological power of communist propaganda with the seductive allure of advertising. Juxtaposing revolutionary images with consumer logos, Wang’s canvases provocate with their duplicitous message, highlighting the conflict between China’s political past and commercialised present. Stylistically merging the government enforced aesthetic of agitprop with the kitsch sensibility of American pop, Wang’s work adopts the cold-war language of the 60s to ironically examine the contemporary polemics of globalisation.

Through his critique, Wang’s paintings weave intricate narratives, implicating the role of the artist as an active participant (both as subjugator and subservient) in economic and social policy. Wang treads a very delicate line between moral dictum and capitalist endorsement; the interpretation of his paintings alternates with the subjectivity of context. Amalgamating, confusing, and blurring opposing ideological beliefs, Wang’s billboard sized canvases readily sell out national valour, while simultaneously devaluing status symbol luxury for the proletariat cause.

Certainly, the vast legacy of propaganda that resulted from this period will continue to impact artists interested in critically examining China’s recent visual history. After all, these images were more than simply popular; for a time, they were the only ones allowed.

Conclusions:

Wang Guangyi had already established his own style and the impact of the work had won him a strong reputation in Chinese art circles.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Wang Guangyi or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/wang_guangyi. htm

He made “Horse” in June 2001. He started to paint these paintings during that summer when he found some old photographs. Originally he wanted to paint something that had a certain distance from reality. He thought to construct a scene in painting, representing things or a certain sentiment from our real life, was not so interesting.

Li Songsong deliberately plays down the potential implication of the images he chooses for his pictures eliminating his personal feelings from these images by adopting an arms length procedure for his work. He breaks up his found images into segments and loosely regroups them through various shades and blocks of color in his painting. For National Geographic, Li downloaded more than a hundred small photographs of details of Taiwan Island from “Google Earth”, a satellite imagery-based mapping website, and reconstructed a collage of Taiwan by depicting each portion in thick and bold strokes of paint.

The painting of the soldiers digging the trench, for example, was a picture he saw by chance. He felt attracted to the process of looking at photographs. When he looks at pictures in a book, he usually turns them over when we understand the meaning in them. He painted this picture probably because He looked at it so closely. It was a very plain photograph: some people in uniform were digging into the earth on a wasteland. After he read the explanation, he realized that the people were voluntary soldiers digging a trench during the Korean War. If you look at an image long enough, you will discover other meanings in it. He had also painted images from TV, the portrait of the late Deng XiaoPing for example. At the time when he passed his portrait was on TV every day. I took a picture of his portrait and painted it. But he didn’t continue with this kind of topics, including the one of the candy box. Perhaps he wanted to paint some existing and ready-made things at that time. But he didn’t want to sketch a person in a conventional type of space. He wanted the original image to be something one dimensional.

Conclusions:

Li Songsong had already established his own style and the impact of the work had won him a strong reputation in Chinese art circles.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Li Songsong or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/li_songsong. htm

The title refers to an enduring figure of Chinese folklore and mythology: Na Zha, an impish trickster with supernatural powers and flamboyant fashion sense (legend has it his red silk trousers generated so much heat the sea began to boil, enraging the East Sea Dragon King). Na Zha’s essential ferocity long since tamed in the Chinese psyche, he is now chiefly celebrated as a God of Lotteries and Gambling, a commodified totem of the new global economy. “Na Zha” is here recast as the brand name for an outrageously unsafe line of baby products. Meticulously assembled in stainless steel from intricate mechanical drawings, they include a deadly Carriage; a sadistic Cradle; a sinister Walker; and a malicious, multi-part Toy complete with needle-tipped pacifiers and dismembering abacus. Baby Boutique confronts its “shopper” with a radically strange and seductive “product,” lethal luxury designed to reveal the forces that dominate our lives in unimaginable ways.

Shi Jinsong enrolled at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 1994, majoring in sculpture and mastering a gamut of traditional techniques. Under the influence of three powerful stimuli – radical socio-cultural change in China; a reading of Foucault’s Madness and Civilization; and the birth of his first daughter – the artist began to investigate ideas of transformation and control. Featured in Alors La Chine, a groundbreaking survey of contemporary Chinese art mounted at the Centre Pompidou in 2003,

Conclusions:

Shi Jinsong had already established his own style and the impact of the work had won him a strong reputation in Chinese art circles.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Shi Jinsong or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/shi_jinsong. htm