Iconoclastic Political Pop painting has long been the symbol of Chinese contemporary art, but in recent years this stereotype has been broken as innovative new genres from young artists are stealing the limelight in the international art world.
Beginning in spring a series of exhibitions held both at home and abroad featured many young artists and provided an excellent platform for their entry into a mature art market.
This weekend "Hey! We're 80s" will showcase work from an up and coming group of artists all born in the 1980s.
These young artists, while gradually earning recognition from domestic gallery owners and collectors, are becoming the focus of attention on the international scene, changing the stereotype that the best Chinese contemporary art is related to politics or social problems.
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Chi Peng's work "Hug Me" [artintern.net]
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Chi Peng, born in 1981 in the city of Yantai in Shandong Province, is an emerging young artist. He has successfully held many solo shows in foreign cities including several of the world's top galleries, such as Centre Pompidou in Paris and Chambers Fine Art in New York.
In his solo exhibition "Living in Seclusion" held in Beijing in May, his series "Hug Me" attracted a large audience. The series included a group of young people dressed in white shirts who walked around the exhibiting hall with pillows attached to their torsos, enticing attendees to hug them.
Chi said that through this work he wanted to express the very common feeling that people of his age are so lonely that they long for a hug and understanding. He added that this feeling of isolation was not only a problem in China, but also all around the world.
The prevalence of such loneliness is why Chi believes his work is so widely accepted. He is one of the few young photographers achieving great success in the art world, with most pieces commanding around US$4,000 each, relatively high in today's photography market.
"The young artists are changing the way Western collectors and curators view Chinese contemporary art," said Chinese curator and artistic director at Beijing-based Star Gallery, Fang Fang. "Definitely they are becoming the new emerging forces of the Chinese art world."
Differentiating themselves from established artists internationally known for their reflections on the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) or the irony of China's fast-developing economy, 1980's artists pay little attention to politics and socio-economics, instead they are much more interested in reflecting the mindsets of their generation.
