FENG MENGBO

He became one of the first Chinese artists to develop an interest in global networking, the virtual world and their effects on human behaviour. Since the early 1990s, he has worked at the intersection of painting and digital media and is widely considered to be a pioneer in new media art. When computer-based art became too common in Feng’s eyes, he returned to painting, although continued to use very innovative and cutting-edge techniques.

Feng disavows the label Political Pop, bestowed on those members of China’s post-Mao avant-garde who commingle the motifs of Communist propaganda and consumer capitalism. Instead, he views himself as less concerned with history and politics than with interactive technologies. Nevertheless, he shares with compatriots like Yu Youhan an insouciant attitude toward the icons of China’s recent past. He uses these cultural icons in a romantic, heroic manner to tell moral or political tales. Feng’s paintings are more whimsical and escapist than those of the Political Pop movement of the time.