DSL Magazine: Issue 6

HU Xiangqian (b. 1983, Guangdong, China) Hu graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. Hu’s artistic practice tends toward performance and video inspired by current events and his own surroundings. With a keen eye for the absurd, he skilfully highlights the contrasts in our society and amplifies minor incidents into major social signifiers. One of his best- known video works, Blue Flags Everywhere , documents a humorous but earnest attempt to run for mayor of his hometown at the age of 21. In Sun , Hu tries to tan himself the same shade as two of his close African friends, while Drift with the Tide is a poignant work about the artist leaving university by literally rowing out to sea. MIAO Xiaochun (b. 1964, Wuxi, China) Miao is renowned for his photographs of contemporary China, vast cityscapes which record technological development, painting an alien view of his homeland and envisioning a new dynastic era. Typically printed in black and white, Miao’s photos are at once enchantingly serene and threateningly industrial. Miao uses photography to engage the viewer in an ultra-modern way. By using digital process to create his subject ‘from scratch’, Miao’s photographs authenticate a virtual world rather than document reality. Similar to video game graphics and ‘screen shots’, Miao’s images involve the viewer by casting them as ‘avatars’ within the action. HUANG Yongping (b. 1954, Xiamen, China) Huang is a contemporary French visual artist of Chinese origin. Huang's work combines many media and cultural influence, but is particularly strongly influence by the intellectual abstraction of Dada and by Chinese numerology traditions. Founder of the Xiamen Dada group in China in the 1980s, Huang's installations have included unorthodox materials such as live snakes and scorpions. Many of Huang's sculptural works encompass a large scale, some tens of meters in dimension. Although Huang permanently left Paris in 1989, his creative methodology remains firmly rooted in his Chinese identity. Huang’s consistent questioning of the hierarchies of language, art, history and politics is equally mediated, however, by Western influences including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Joseph Beuys, John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. In fact it is the collision between ancient beliefs (China) and new knowledge (the West) that drives Huang’s art. LI Ran (b. 1986, Hubei, China) Graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2009, Li is the co-founder of the artist group " බྖ /Company". Li has had solo shows at Beijing’s Magician Space and Shanghai’s Aike Dellarco Gallery, and was included in the Shenzhen and Gwangju Biennales in 2012. Li also took part in curator Biljana Ciric’s “Alternatives to Ritual” exhibition at the Goethe Institute Open Space in Shanghai, and ON/OFF, a major survey of young Chinese artists in Beijing’s Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA). In 2013, Li participated in a group show focusing on reassessing performance art in China (curated by Su Wei at Beijing’s Star Gallery). For Art Basel Hong Kong 2013, Li was commissioned by Aike Dellarco to create a new piece for the gallery’s space in the “Discoveries” section of the fair. SHI Qing (b. 1969, Baotou, Inner Mongolia) Shi Qing's work is hard to categorize and always evolves in both media and methodological tools of perception. From behavioral analysis of psychology to study of geopolitical conflict in the globalized world, from socialist cultural heritage to actual geographical environment in the nomadic space, a wide range of topics have come under his attention. His recent projects are more focused on everyday life politics and artistic production relations. Shi lived and worked in Beijing for almost two decades before moving to Shanghai. A selection of major exhibitions in which Shi Qing has participated includes: Santa Fe Biennale (U.S.A, 2008), Guangzhou Triennial (China, 2005), Prague Biennale (Czech Republic, 2005), Busan Biennale (Korea, 2004). MadeIn Under the moniker MadeIn, Shanghai-based artist Xu Zhen employs a pool of young artists to conceive and execute vast quantities of work in a range of media. Since the group’s inception in 2009, MadeIn’s paintings, sculptures and installations have frequently been shown in both solo presentations and group exhibitions. MadeIn's key conceptual strategy is to challenge the audience's perception through artworks that verge between the genuine and the unbelievable.