Email Page Add To Tour Print Page

Missing

September 23, 2006- October 28, 2006

Reception: September 23, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Sheng Qi

798 Avant Gallery

511 W 25th St

Solo exhibition of Sheng Qi's new work.

Sheng's left hand has become a stage for the placement of photographs from his childhood, his family portraits, Cultural Revolution poster images, historical figures, movie stars, pornographic images and news photos of past and recent political events. As Wu Hung commented: "Sheng Qi's interest lies in the historicity and vulnerability of printed images-and memory that they preserve."Sheng's powerful representation of found images, whether private or public, personal or national, originals or reproductions, confront the viewer on many levels. As he resizes images and places them in his palm, he impresses the viewer with the sheer scale of the hand and the found image displayed in it.

THE GUARDIAN Chinese artist cross the red line 24.04.2006 By Jonathan Watts, The Guardian

Two years ago, officials ordered the closure of an exhibition by Sheng Qi, who cut off the little finger of his left hand after the 1989 crackdown and who now juxtaposes this mutilation with idealished pictures form the cultural revolution. But the ban aroused the buyers’ interest. In the next few months, Sheng was the gallery’s best - selling artist.

Sheng Qi painter and performance artist, 41 whose motif is his muilated left hand. He cut off the little fingger in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

THE TIMES “This is the collection of my memories,” he says. “All of the images of my life.” And sitting over a drink with him in Beijing, I did find him strangely sanguine about the experience.

Born on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, he was involved in the Students’ Movement in 1989 that ended so disastrously in Tiananmen Square. Today he lives in a city that is embracing capitalism with a haste that is dizzying. How should one react to changes like that?

Sundyherald Sheng Qi continues to work, most recently on pieces based on raising awareness of Aids and HIV, and on a series of photographs of propaganda images from local newspapers, scaled down and photo graphed in the palm of his mutilated hand. The aim is to shrink these mass- communicated images, to juxtapose the “lie” of the photograph, with the “truth” his hand represents.

But Sheng’s work is no longer regarded as dangerous and he operates largely unhindered, and unaided.

THE NEW YORK TIMES Tuesday, July 18, 2006

ART REVIEW; Like a Bird in Flight: Capturing Today’s Chinese Culture in Transition

By HOLLAND COTTER Published: June 11, 2004

Mao appears elsewhere, too, as do hints of the kind of political oppression associalted with his name, In three pictures, Sheng Qi photographs his own left hand holding a snapshot: one of himself as a child, one of his mother and one of Mao. What’s arresting, though, is the face that the little finger of the hand is missing. The artist cut it off in a gesture of protest before going into political exile at the time of the Tiananmem Massacre 1989.

Some Chinese work (like so much art in general) merely illustrates obvious moral or social points. But the strongest images in “Between Past and Future” are emotionally complex and provocative, mysteriously crystallizing the mood of the culture. When Sheng Qi moved abroad for political reasons, for example, he cut off one finger and left it behind—a pointed symbol of exile.

Later, in some photographs called “Memories,” he placed a series of family photographs in the palm of his hand, as if to replace the finger with another piece of the disfigured past. His “Memories” seem both personal and historical. China’s open palm awaits, in his work, its fortuneteller.

Sheng Qi’s work is a very personal expression of individual anguish. The painful image of a hand without the last finger combined with press images taken from earlier eras presents a complex expression of individual struggle

Several other paintings directly portray Tiananmen Square. One is by Sheng Qi, the young artist who cut off his little finger after the "1989 incident" as it is officially termed, and whose maimed hand has become a key motif in his art.

One such picture, by artist, Sheng Qi, was used as the cover photograph for the Between Past and Future, which portrays his injured hand long healed, holding within his palm a small black and white passport photograph of himself as a boy. He had cut his little finger in protest to the ending of the democracy movement in 1989. But what the photograph shows is not so much the missing absence of a body element. It does not detract from what has remained living and intact, which is what this particular exhibition aims to bring across, a breathing testament to what cannot be repressed or effaced, let alone erased

Sheng Qi is one of China's avant-garde and one of the leading figures in China's New Art Movement. His creative concentrates on his life-long exploration of two areas: the body and status. As an investigator of the cultural significance of the body, he takes commonplace cultural themes and places them in a detailed cultural environment and history, following its origin and course of development, using his own body to express the boundary lines between tangible and intangible culture.

A complete rejection of political totality within the modern media remains, resulting in a pure expression through the physical rarity of the artist's hand and the artist's process.

Sheng Qi draws inspiration from the Chinese culture, and gives new dimensions of meaning to his present work by setting it within a historically contextualized installation. As a multi-disciplinary artist, he uses performance, photo-collages, as well as paintings to center around issues of identity, sexuality and communication in a Chinese context.

See artwork by Chinese artists Sheng Qi who are making their mark on the world stage.

Sheng Qi's left hand is unique, a digit is permanently missing. Now, in the same way the images he responds to are also ‘missing', removed from their original purpose.

Between Past and Future, where his photographic work was selected for the cover of the exhibition catalogue. He is also one of the few artists in China to concern himself with AIDS and to become involved in local awareness campaigns

In any discussion concerning the history and development of Chinese performance art, it would be hard to avoid mentioning such an unusual, brave and adventurous artist as Sheng Qi.

By 1986 he had already thrown himself into the practice of performance art, and is recognized as one of the earliest protagonists of this art form in China he carried out performance works in various symbolic locations including Peking University (1986), the Yuanmingyuan(1987) and on the Great Wall(1988). Because of this, his performances are regarded as having made an important contribution to the beginning of Chinese performance art.

He starts with portraits of children executed with a rigorous academic painting and creating a distressed and sorrowful atmosphere. Because of this mixture of orthodox “academic” and natural “chance” methods in his treatment of the paintings, a sort of hazy ambiguous state is produced. Through the “destructon” and “revision” of painting itself, Sheng Qi is constructing a painting language that explores the aesthetics of violence and is strongly critical in nature

Reviewing the documentation of Sheng Qi’s past works, we can still sense his passion for art and the cultural transgression these works represented in the context of that time.

Sheng Qi is a very active modern artist and takes part in paintings, photography and performance art. He has gone to a self-exile after the Tiananmen Incident.

He claimed that he did not paint his work but write his work. He tries to use well-known figures to target people’s collective memory. One time when he went to a banquet, he shook hand with others by using his left hand. He explained that people could feel the missing finger in the most directed way and he could draw people’s attention on disability.

Some Chinese work (like so much art in general) merely illustrates obvious moral or social points. But the strongest images in “Between Past and Future” are emotionally complex and provocative, mysteriously crystallizing the mood of the culture. When Sheng Qi moved abroad for political reasons, for example, he cut off one finger and left it behind—a pointed symbol of exile.

Later, in some photographs called “Memories,” he placed a series of family photographs in the palm of his hand, as if to replace the finger with another piece of the disfigured past. His “Memories” seem both personal and historical. China’s open palm awaits, in his work, its fortuneteller.

Sheng Qi’s work is a very personal expression of individual anguish. The painful image of a hand without the last finger combined with press images taken from earlier eras presents a complex expression of individual struggle

Several other paintings directly portray Tiananmen Square. One is by Sheng Qi, the young artist who cut off his little finger after the "1989 incident" as it is officially termed, and whose maimed hand has become a key motif in his art.

One such picture, by artist, Sheng Qi, was used as the cover photograph for the Between Past and Future, which portrays his injured hand long healed, holding within his palm a small black and white passport photograph of himself as a boy. He had cut his little finger in protest to the ending of the democracy movement in 1989. But what the photograph shows is not so much the missing absence of a body element. It does not detract from what has remained living and intact, which is what this particular exhibition aims to bring across, a breathing testament to what cannot be repressed or effaced, let alone erased

Sheng Qi is one of China's avant-garde and one of the leading figures in China's New Art Movement. His creative concentrates on his life-long exploration of two areas: the body and status. As an investigator of the cultural significance of the body, he takes commonplace cultural themes and places them in a detailed cultural environment and history, following its origin and course of development, using his own body to express the boundary lines between tangible and intangible culture.

Books and DVDs related to artists in this show

Location map  Address 511 W 25th St, #502 New York (Chelsea) NY, 10001 United States Phone 212-216-9018 Fax 212-807-8268 Hours Tue-Sat 11-6 Add To Tour Nearby: All 26 galleries at 511 W 25th St

© 2005-2008 chelseaartgalleries.com | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Site Map