ART
Portrait of the artist as a fish
Daily Xpress
Published on September 11, 2008
A photographer dives into the minds of China’s avante garde for surreal snapshots of their inspirations
If an artist’s job is to hold up a mirror to society’s soul, what happens when we look into theirs?
British photographer Hugo Tillman has managed to conŽvince 22 Chinese avantgarde artists to pose for surrealistic portraits in a show called “Hugo Tillman: Mind Games” at the Louis Vuitton Gallery, Hong Kong.
Tillman has spent the last two years interviewing his subŽjects before throwing them inŽto the realms of fantasy. For two hours, each artist was asked about their sources of inŽspiration, views of the world, as well as secret fears and dreams.
From this information Tillman created a set into which the artists would be inŽserted. The result is a series of extraordinary portraits.
Zhang Xiaotao sits in a fish tank, with carp swimming by his submerged face while conŽdoms and lilies float on the surface. Water is a common motif in Xiaotao’s work, which addresses the ongoing struggle between life and death, an echo perhaps of a recurring dream of drowning he had as a sevenyearold.
Conceptual artist Ai Wei Wei is captured sitting alone, eating – a reflection of the elements of traditional Chinese culture he uses in his work. Wei Wei is perhaps best known for helping to design Beijing’s “bird’s nest” Olympic Stadium.
Meanwhile, sculptor Chen Wenling turns transvestite, wearing a brightred robe and posing delicately on antique furniture. Wenling’s sculptures distort reality by giving animals human characteristics or huŽmans animal characteristics in order to comment on the nature of contemporary life in China.
In May 2008, a painting from the series “Mask” by Zeng Fanzhi set a worldrecord price for Chinese contemporary art when it was sold for US$9.7 milŽlion (Bt335 million). In it, a group of youngsters wearing the red scarf of young Red Guards sport huge but fakelooking grins. As there are no clues to what his characters might be thinking, Tillman’s portrait has multiples of Fanzhi wearing a black suit roaming around a studio.
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