Artists selected by Art Channel Gallery, Beijing

Meng Jin

Fang Er

Han Bing

Jin Jiangbo

Rong Guang Rong

Jiang Xiyao

Gao Brothers

Li Nan

Zhang Zhaogong 

Yin Nan

De Gang

Meng Jin

Born in 1973, in Chong Qing, China

Lives and works in Beijing

Artist statement:  

A lot of my artworks are portraits that enter into a dialogue about the relationship between architectural forms and the conditions of society.

With regard to forms, I am really extremely interested because in life we are in a completely materialistic, manufactured world where almost everything communicates to you with its own form. Materialistic daily products, furniture, buildings - all impact on our consciousness in the most direct way, and in the midst of it we are affected in a thousand different ways: our rights, our success, bad luck, failures etc, so the laws and properties of these products also give us laws and properties in the heart and in society.  These relationships are always the axis of my artworks.

Fang Er

Born in Taipei, Taiwan

Living and working in Beijing

I am a visual worker, I’ve been settled in Beijing for three years already now, and for a lot of people, the violent changes of this period haven’t yet been given an adequate published appraisal.  Yet these three years as I see it, have involved a complete overhaul of the city’s belief system.  My works examine the relationship between people, architecture and the city’s development.  In the first series of works, “The Zoo”, we see a kaleidoscope of Beijing’s great buildings and skyscrapers forming insect-like constructions, reminding us of the craziness of the everyday environment. 

They depict this great metropolis’s future landscape and also raise certain questions. Chinese people are bewildered by this frenetic construction, which is startling people with the rapid development of so-called “new” forms and structures, expressing the bravado and boastfulness of the economy.  Then at the time of the second series of works, “Don’t Touch Me!”, I wanted to express the damaging influence of premature economic development on the environment and also the reality of the development, migration and expansion of the city’s factories. 

Han Bing

1974  Born in Jiangsu, PRC,  Lives and works in Beijing

1996  B. A. Xuzhou Normal University, Department of Art, PRC

1999  Advanced Studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing 

Artist statement:

The view of history and the yearning for a new life are concentrated in China's pursuit of so-called "modernity." Like the experience of other Third World countries, China's pursuit of a certain kind of special or specifically designated modernity has continuously disrupted people's ways of life. The fragments of their previously existing cultural values lie in wreckage, like the "New China's" vast expanse of city ruins. Five thousand years shriek and vanish into mountains of urban rubble, but the direction of this new life cannot be seen clearly in these concrete skies, or through the haze of dust spreading endlessly like a veil. 

My photography series, "Everyday Precious," presents the existential conditions of people dreaming of modernization and urbanization. It is about the interchange between people and the ordinary objects from their daily lives, as well as a mirror of the process by which their traditional everyday lives are ruptured through modernization.

Jin Jiangbo

1972  Born in Zhejiang Province, China

1995  Graduated from Academy of  Fine Arts of Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

1997 -1998 Clesys Co., Ltd., multi-media design management training. Tokyo, Japan

Artist statement:

I am making China Market Prospect, which observes the progress of market development and reflects on the reality and development made under the current social and governmental systems, as well as captures the forms of market prosperity. I photograph such market activity into a denaturalized scene, which is a real social scene covering a great amount of information, though it may transcend or even contradict our common sense to the truest reality. This is why I call it denaturalized scene. 

I believe the industrial world of today has been distorted and can't be observed and entered normally. It can’t be measured by a normal economic sense. Rather it has become a game chip of the global economic integration. For example, commodity prices are soaring in a denaturalized way instead of decided by the supply and demand. In fact, in many local markets, goods are over-flown with few buyers. Such a circumstance is not natural and even distorted to me.

So I focus on a lot of unnatural details and shoot the scenes in a denaturalized proportion of 4:3 and panorama, to cover as many details as possible. In this way, viewers would be able to discover the hidden distortions which appear normal.

Rong Guang Rong

Born in Northeast China in 1984.

Moved to Beijing and started to work as photographer in 798 Art District in 2001. Currently he is devoting to photography, documentaries and experimental short videos.  

A STORY FROM THE SMALL CITY 1-2-3

Video, Color, DVCAM, Production: 2008, Length: 7.18 mins

The video has been shot in Hengdian Film Studios. The artist shows a special interest in the structure of reality within young generations’ urban daily life. Trapped by the everyday routine, life passes under an endless cycle of repeated actions, while fantasies and solitude erode the fragile framework representing the reality. ‘A Story from the Small City’ is about cities, virtual reality, obsessed reality, old, new, real and fake in contemporary China.

Rong Guang Rong was born in Dongbei province in 1984. In 2001 he moved to Beijing and started to work as photographer in 798 Art District. Currently he is devoted to photography, documentaries and experimental videos. 

Jiang Xiyao

Born in 1981, Tianjin City, China

Viewing classical Chinese landscape paintings, it is clear that Chinese depictions of nature are seldom mere representations of the external world. Rather, they are expressions of the mind and heart of individual artists. Following this tradition, Jiang Xiyao’s paintings are like conversations between his inner and outer worlds, they are a visual translation of his feelings living in the city. He has a very interesting and individual outlook. His subject is the metropolis: Beijing’s buildings and street scenes interpreted with technical means and styles which are inter-related as they represent various visages of contemporary metropolitan emerging landscapes. While the pencil lines on his canvas build the structure of the skyscrapers he is mostly working with color and reflections to express the urban movement. The beautiful images and curves in the background of this painting and the buildings reflected on their selves are mirrors of the city and artist’s feelings.

Gao Brothers

1956  Gao Zhen was born in Jinan, Shandong Province, China

1962  Gao Qiang was born in Jinan, Shandong Province, China

The Gao Brothers are a pair of artist brothers based in Beijing and authors of several published works, including “How Far Can You Walk in One Day in Beijing”, “The Current State Of Chinese Avant-Garde Art” and “The Report Of Art Environment”, They have been collaborating on installation, performance, sculpture, photography works and writing since the mid 1980s. Some of their works were published in “A History Of China Modern Art”,” China Avant-garde Photography”, “The Best Photography Of China”, etc, and is held in private and museums collections, such as He Xiangning Art Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Li Nan

1982    Born in Dalian, Liaoning Province, China

2006    Graduated from Photography Department of Central Fine Arts Academy.

Now lives in Bejing.

Zhang Zhaogong 

1984  Born on 10^th November, 1984.

2000-2004  The School of China Central Academy of Fine Arts.

2004-2008  China Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Yin Nan

Born in 1981, in Tangshan City, Hebei Province

Further studied in Visual Communication Department of Tsinghua University,

Beijing, China

What can we see through the window . . .? 

Started in early 2006, I began to record some fragments of our daily life through destroyed windows.

What can we imagine through these disappeared windows? 

It might be too heavy, or insignificant. 

I think what I can do is to record them in my way.

Even if it has already disappeared...

Even if it has been meaningless…

De Gang

Born in 1970.

This world is not only a material world, it is also an energy and information world.  Ideology is a set of information, which causes the world changing and forming a new set of information. 

And the relationship between human beings is as same as information.

It is just a habit that we subjectively and arbitrarily take it granted that ourselves are quite different from the atomic-bombs we made.

What I am doing now is to find a graphic media to explain such a world-view. It may be a new combination of Francis Bacon with pop Art, or something uncertain which need to be discovered…….