Collective Memories: Beijing Hotel

2007 - Painting (Painting)

Chen Shaoxiong

location: Beijing
location: Guangzhou, China
year born: 1962
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Shantou, Guangdong Province, China

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective. This “return to origin” reveals an interesting critical reflection on the interactive relation between outside change and internal reflection, and the possibility for more experimental approaches that revive “traditional media.” Chen’s series Collective Memories depicts some of the most important architectural works and urban sites in modern Chinese society, especially those related to the history of revolutions. Instead of reproducing the images himself, Chen invited the public to participate in their making by using their fingers to paint directly on the paper or canvas. The resulting paintings made from hundreds of individual thumbprints embody and metaphorize the fragility and uncertain future of collective memories in a time of rapid urban expansion and globalization.


Chen Shaoxiong, was a founding member—along with Lin Yilin and Liang Juhui (and later Xu Tan)—of the well-known artist collective “Big Tail Elephant” which arose in response to the rapid urbanization od Guangzhou in the early 1990s. The group created a large body of multimedia work including performance, photography, video, installation, and paintings. In his solo work, Chen focuses his efforts on the new forms of perception of urban visions and life imposed by the age of information and global travel. Using both new media, like photography and video, and more traditional forms like painting, he produces ironic and uncanny images of a new reality and its constant negotiation between reality and fiction, memory and imagination, past, present and future.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Animation, » Black and White, » China, » Contemporary Participation, » Chinese  
» see more

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

Same Old Crowd
© » KADIST

Li Ran

2016

The four-channel video installation Same Old Crowd departs from the documentation of an unknown city and takes place in an ambiguous temporal and spatial frame...

Pleasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh - 3
© » KADIST

Yang Zhenzhong

2012

Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Ink Diary
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2006

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

Silencer #16 & #17
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2010

MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

buZ Blurr, One Telling of the “Origin Story” at Straat Museum Amsterdam
© » BROOKLYN STREET ART

buZ Blurr, One Telling of the “Origin Story” at Straat Museum Amsterdam | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY In the shifting culturescapes of urban contemporary art, STRAAT Museum’s latest exhibition, “Moniker: An Origin Story,” emerges as a poignant narrative that bridges the transient heritage of hobo monikers with the vibrant pulse of today’s street art scene...

Curator Lauren Haynes Revisits a 1966 Profile of Spiral, Pioneering Black Art Collective
© » ARTNEWS RETROSPECTIVE

Curator Lauren Haynes Revisits ARTnews’s 1966 Profile of Spiral Group – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Alex Greenberger Plus Icon Alex Greenberger Senior Editor, ARTnews View All November 4, 2020 5:15pm ©ARTnews I n 1963, 14 Black artists in New York formed the Spiral group...

Mémoire promise #3
© » KADIST

Nidhal Chamekh

2016

Nidhal Chamekh made the first drawings of the ongoing series Mémoire Promise in 2013...

4 mourners on a mantel
© » KADIST

Gala Porras-Kim

2017

The graphite drawing 4 mourners on a mantel by Gala Porras-Kim is part of a larger installation and body of research, entitled An Index and Its Settings (Un Índice y Sus Entornos) , in which the artist reconsiders 235 ancient burial figures (from circa 200 BCE – 50 CE) from what is now Mexico’s Pacific coast that are part of the Proctor Stafford Collection held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)...

Related works from the » 2000's created around » Beijing  
» see more

Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
© » KADIST

Jiang Pengyi

2008

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...

Dilemma, three way of fork in the road
© » KADIST

Jianwei Wang

2007

In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...

Diversionist
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2004

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Other works by: » Chen Shaoxiong  
» see more

Ink Diary
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2006

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

Related artist(s) to: Chen Shaoxiong » Zhang Peili, » Ai Weiwei, » Cao Fei, » Chen Chieh-Jen, » Chen Qiulin, » Geng Jianyi, » Xu Tan, » Yao Jui-Chung, » Adel Abdessemed, » Aida Makoto  
» see more

Shanghai Biennale Awaiting Your Arrival
© » KADIST

Xu Tan

2000

Shanghai Biennale, Awaiting Your Arrival is an appropriation of the posters made to promote biennial art exhibitions...

Long Long Live
© » KADIST

Yao Jui-Chung

2013

Long Long Live (2013) takes the viewer to the setting of the Oasis Villa on Green Island, once a reform and re-education prison to house political prisoners during Taiwan’s martial law period...

Biennale, Dog
© » KADIST

Xu Tan

2003

Biennale, Dog is an appropriation of the posters made to promote biennial art exhibitions...

Empire's Borders II-Passage
© » KADIST

Chen Chieh-Jen

2010

Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger
© » KADIST

A common dynamic amongst individuals in large cities is the possibility of anonymity, the luxury and burden engaging with the city’s other inhabitants...

Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger
© » KADIST

A common dynamic amongst individuals in large cities is the possibility of anonymity, the luxury and burden engaging with the city’s other inhabitants...

The End
© » KADIST

Dennis Adams

2002

Observing the sky after 11 September 2001, Dennis Adams photographed elements which had been lifted by drafts and were floating above the city of New York...

Anatomy of Landscape - Jos 16
© » KADIST

Abraham Oghobase

2018

This series of photographs is inspired by the artist’s travels to Jos, Nigeria...