Miao Xiaochun: Urban Landscapes
October 27, 2006 - February 23, 2007
Main Gallery, John Hope Franklin Center
Opening Reception
Friday, October 27, 2006
6:00 - 7:30 PM :: Franklin Center Main Gallery
see also Between Past & Future: New Photography & Video from China
Opening at the Nasher Museum of Art
October 26 - February 18, 2007
Curator's Statement
- Wu Hung
Born in 1964, Miao Xiaochun received his art education at Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany, after studying art history in Beijing’s Central Academy of Art and working as a freelance painter for five years. He returned to China in 1999 to teach at the newly established Department of Photography and New Media at his alma mater. As a result of this background, his photographs betray a painter’s eyes, and also attest to a strong attraction to new visual technology.
Since the late 1990s, Miao Xiaochun has created a large body of works which represent the dramatic urban transformation in China and his experience in foreign and Chinese cities. The six images in this exhibition represent some major development after 2002, when he began to make constructed photographs with the help of a computer. The four vertical compositions reveal strong impact of a traditional “vertical scroll” painting, which often embodies shifting viewpoints along the axis. These photographs include the image of a life-size mannequin as the artist’s alter-ego. Dressed as an ancient Chinese gentleman, he is both fascinated and puzzled by what he confronts in contemporary China.
The two large, horizontal pictures are selected from Miao Xiaochun’s latest works. The artist has replaced the ancient statue with his own image in Jump, whereas Orbit takes Beijing’s exuberant street life as its sole subject. Both examples reveal a new, intense interest in combining a grant composition with infinite, minute details. According to the artist, such details can effectively animate a still image because they guide the viewer’s gaze traveling through a large cityscape and generate movement within a representation.
For more information on this and other exhibits at the Franklin Center, contact Pamela Gutlon, p.gutlon@duke.edu.