Important Notice

CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART

The following five lots by artists Wu Yi, Ge Guanzhong, Xu Lei, Miao Xiaochun and Chen Ke range from beautiful, detailed contemporary ink works to sculptural digital paintings. Born in the 1960s and 1970s, these artists exhibit a deep and nuanced knowledge of both Chinese and European art history, often marrying the two in their work to create an innovative artistic vocabulary. While Wu Yi, Ge... CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART

The following five lots by artists Wu Yi, Ge Guanzhong, Xu Lei, Miao Xiaochun and Chen Ke range from beautiful, detailed contemporary ink works to sculptural digital paintings. Born in the 1960s and 1970s, these artists exhibit a deep and nuanced knowledge of both Chinese and European art history, often marrying the two in their work to create an innovative artistic vocabulary. While Wu Yi, Ge Guanzhong, and Xu Lei experiment with traditional Chinese styles, techniques and even myths and narratives (lots 60 - 62), Chen Ke and Miao Xiaochun reference Renaissance murals, placing them within current sociopolitical contexts (lot 63 and 64).

Born in 1964 in Wuxi, Miao Xiaochun is a Chinese artist whose practice encompasses photography, new media and digital art. He obtained degrees in German literature and art history from Nanjing University and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, and the Kunsthochschule in Kassel, Germany. The artist???s works can be found in numerous public and private collections, and he also represented China at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Miao's conceptual works employing three-dimensional computer-generated images, such as the present lot, have been referred to by critics as "algorithmic painting," involving both digital and manual techniques, presented as a physical manifestation of a virtual world. (Wang Chunchen, "Save As: On Miao Xiaochun's Algorithmic Painting," London: Tate, 2 February 2015, miaoxiaochun.com, online)

Since incorporating these techniques in his art in 2005, Miao has used new media to reinterpret and even subvert canons of art history, especially classical European paintings by Renaissance masters including Bruegel, Raphael and Botticelli. Updating these to reflect contemporary contexts and media, the artist demonstrates that "there is not such a big contrast between the ancient and modern times. If we look at the history of the world, a hundred years or thousand years is not that much. The modern times and the classic times are not so far away... So I want to make a bridge between East and West, between past and present." (Artist quoted in "Miao Xiaochun pushes limits of digital art," Art Radar, 1 December 2010, online)

The present lot is a triptych whose semi-circular form recalls an arch, reimagining the 16th century fresco it is based on - Italian artist Raphael's masterpiece The School of Athens, which adorned the rooms of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Rather than a gathering of some of the greatest minds and philosophers, however, Miao's rendition features identical, faceless, sculptural avatars engaged in a tableau vivant. Like artists including Raphael and Michelangelo, who often painted themselves into their works, Miao's avatars are modelled after the artist himself, perhaps representing the potential of the individual, and the multiple roles we are all capable of individual, and the multiple roles we are all capable of and assume in an increasingly mediated world.

The result is a blurring of the boundary between the real and the virtual, characteristic of contemporary life. According to a press release in 2010 for a solo exhibition of new works by the artist, "As Miao Xiaochun's avatar encompasses all gender and ethnic demarcations, the place where the I can become the Other and the Other can become I - wouldn't this be our "new" Renaissance, where we all may start afresh?" ("Miao Xiaochun - New Works," arariogallery.com, 2010, online)

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