8 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2008 SUNDAY MORNING POST Edited by Kevin Kwong
[email protected] It’s all about the individual for the new generation of mainland artists, writes Kristina Perez Me and mine hen Fei’s Beijing studio Chen has long absorbed foreign looks like a nursery for influences. He recalls picking up a horror film producers: traditional Chinese paintbrush to it’s packed with a draw his first portrait – of Mickey mint-condition collection Mouse – when he was six. Cof dolls from Hollywood films such Today, his psychedelic-patterned as Friday the 13th and Predator. painting style centres on the Fellow artist Zhao Yiquan is also into immediacy of life – his apartment, toys, particularly Transformers. dogs and girlfriend – and the raw The two twentysomethings emotion of western horror and might be called geeks in the west, adult movies. but on the mainland they are niubi, Chen was an art director in films part of a “Me generation” of hipsters who became frustrated with its who were raised under the one-child production values and quit to policy yet whose art has been express his storytelling and desire for influenced by the internet, comics, special effects on a different canvas. video games and globalisation. “In my pretend world, I am the Chen and Zhao’s art will be bad guy who kills everyone without featured in an exhibition of works by taking responsibility,” he says. six niubi artists at Schoeni Art Gallery, in Central, later this month. The displays include paintings, Celebrities look sculpture, mixed digital media, 3D animation and mixed-media charming but they photography in an exhibition its may have made organisers say makes a stark comparison between their art and a lot of sacrifices that by artists from the 85 New Wave, a movement whose lives were to be a celebrity defined by the Cultural Revolution .....................................................