Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China's most controversial artists, who are known for their extreme installations and conceptual artworks. For them, art is no more than an interesting career, "All things that are creative are art, and all people that are creating are artists", according to Peng Yu.
Read MoreSun Yuan and Peng Yu have known each since studying together at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. They began working together in 2000, beginning with early works such as Human Oil (2000), they have been focused on creating powerful visual works. They often employ extreme materials such as human fat tissue, live animals and baby cadavers, and their artworks deal with issues of perception, death and human condition. They are focused on the interaction between the audience and the artworks with the hope of granting the audience extraordinary experiences from their direct interaction with the art.
In their installation project Freedom (2009), the artists separated the audience from the artwork by “safely” housing the artwork within a room in the gallery from which the audience can look in on the work through a window. Inside the room was a black rubber hose hanging in the middle of the room that was attached to a high-powered water pump that caused the hose to move in a constant state of striking gestures. Pressure from the mechanised pump appears to free the hose from gravity. There is not a consistent theme in their works. The pursuit of freedom provides them impetus for continuous creation.
Sun Yuan was born in 1972, Beijing and graduated from the Painting Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Peng Yu was born in 1974 and graduated from the same department in 1998. They live and work collaboratively in Beijing. They received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2001.
They have been included in the following exhibitions: The 51st Venice Biennale (2005), Venice, Italy; The 5th Lyon Biennale (2000), Lyon, France; The 4th Liverpool Biennale (2006), Liverpool, England; Indulge in Hurt (2000) at Sculpture Research Fellow of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China and Fuck Off! at Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, China. The artwork Old Persons Home is part of the Saatchi Collection.
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