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| Selected Art Works by Shi Jinsong |
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Thursday, September 6, 2007
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. View Shi Jinsong paintings, biography, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and resource of Shi Jinsong. View art online at The Saatchi Gallery - London contemporary art gallery. Shi Jinsong 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 Marlene Dumas Biography and her Art work Marlene Dumas was born on 1953 in Cape Town and graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975. She studied psychology in Holland for two years (1979--1980). Since then she has had numerous exhibitions and her reputation has steadily grown.Marlene Dumas makes paintings with no concept of the taboo. Racism, sexuality, religion, motherhood and childhood are all presented with chilling honesty. Undermining universally held belief systems, Dumas corrupts the very way images are negotiated. Stripped of the niceties of moral consolation, Marlene Dumas's work provokes unmitigated horror. She offers no comfort to the viewer, only an unnerving complicity and confusion between victims and oppressors. ‘I don't have any conception of how big an average head is, I've never been interested in anatomy. In that respect I relate like children do. What is experienced as most important is seen as the biggest, irrespective of actual or factual size. In the movies everything is larger than life and yet you experience that as real(istic); all my faces are much bigger than human scale. From blowing up to zooming in, for me the “close-up” was a way of getting rid of irrelevant background information and by making the facial elements so big, it increased the sense of abstraction concerning the picture frame. The elimination of the background also did away with the place of being and environmental context.' ‘As the isolation of a recognisable figure increases and the narrative character decreases (contrary to what one might initially assume that this lack of illustrative information would bring about), the interpretative effects are inflamed. The titles re-direct the work, however, they do not eradicate the inherent ambiguity. One cannot interpret the painting of Jule-die Vrou without entangling some of the root metaphors applied not only to the female, but to the idea of portrayal in general'. Marlene Dumas, 1992. Conclusions: Marlene Dumas's provocative paintings of women, children, celebrities and people of colour are as psychologically disturbing as they are violently beautiful. Championing the under-represented classes, her characters occupy an unholy ground where the viewer's individual morality, ethics and adherence to ideological convention are questioned. What to Do Next... If you want any information about Marlene Dumas or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/marlene_dumas.htm View Marlene Dumas paintings, biography, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and resource of Marlene Dumas artist.View art online at The Saatchi Gallery - London contemporary art gallery. Marlene Dumas Jason Fox Biography and his Art work Jason Fox was born on 1964 in Yonkers, New York and currently Lives and works in New York.Fox’s paintings are hybrid creations of fictionalised misfits, heroes or anti-heroes and the works can be referenced to art visionaries such as Goya and Picasso and to genres such as science fiction, blax-ploitation films and video game iconography. Using painting as a springboard for fiction and critique, Jason Fox’s canvases picture a host of invented characters: each comically monstrous in their distortion of social stereotype. Describing his work as “portraits of being stuck inside a big, powerful, stupid, funny, crazy, violent, ignorant, dangerous head looking into a mirror”, Fox draws equally from art history, cartooning, and cult films, to provoke an edgy subversion of popular culture. Bringing into question issues of race, gender, class, and politics, Fox’s satirical commentary is underscored by a masterful command of quotation and technique. In Star Star, Fox shrouds his withered oracle with an American flag, creating a totem of protest and humour; a scathing joke underscored by the addition of a red clown nose attached to the painting’s surface. The Flash Art article ‘U.S Pain. New American Figuration’* written over ten years ago by Francesco Bonami described a generation of American artists that included Jim Shaw, Raymond Pettibon, Sue Williams and Jason Fox, all commonly linked by their satirical views on art and society and their ‘figuration and language as a cure to all its creative and existential, pathological ills. Conclusion : Through Fox’s technique of loose brushwork, the use of a restricted palette and mimicry of a cartoon drawing style, a sense of black humour pervades over the abstract beauty and grotesque symbolism that is created What to Do Next... If you want any information about Jason Fox or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jason_fox.htm View Jason Fox paintings, biography, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and resource of Jason Fox artist. View art online at The Saatchi Gallery - London contemporary art gallery. Jason Fox |
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