Anton Bruehl
Christine Davis
Stan Douglas
Walker Evans
Geoffrey Farmer
CAO FEI
Greg Girard
Mike Grill
shari hatt
Fred Herzog
J Kuhn
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Tim Lee
JUDY LINN
Kyla Mallett
LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY
Dick Oulton
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii
Danny Singer
John Vanderpant
Johannes Wohnseifer
ANONYMOUS
ANONYMOUS (SPIRIT)

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CAO FEI
PATTERNED BODIES, 2001

Lightjet print
Image dimensions 90 x 60 cm
Edition 1/10

ESTIMATE $4,000 - $5,000

Cao Fei is a key member of a vibrant new generation of Chinese artists currently emerging in the country. Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, by the age of 20 she had directed extravagant theatre pieces, and has quickly developed an expansive oeuvre of theatrical performance, photography, writing, sound works, installation, video and film. Coming of age in a world of electronic advertising, readily available digital video technology and imported entertainment, her influences range from MTV and rap music to traditional Chinese opera. Many of her projects have documented the rapid transformations and accelerations of life in the Pearl River Delta, such as Milkman, a film shown at PHG last summer as part of the exhibition Territory. Cao Fei’s complex projects often grow from concentrated research into contemporary Chinese society, and she recently spent over six months in a lighting factory producing a number of media works, installations and photographic series.

Cao Fei came to international prominence in 2004 with an eight-minute video and a related photographic series titled COS Players. As Serpentine Gallery Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist states of this ground-breaking work, it is “both critical and spectacular, using pop culture as a bridge rather than as a simple reference in the ubiquitous orgy of appropriation and revival. The title refers to the subculture of costume play in which young men and women dress as Japanese anime characters and behave as their chosen avatars. Cloaked in black capes and metallic suits and wielding menacing weapons, which are supposed to give them magical powers, they chase each other across the fields outside Guangzhou and stalk anonymous urban spaces. Along the way, the camera takes in enormous construction sites and herds of livestock, in an attempt to grasp the marvelous and strange contrasts in the heart of the real city.” The theatrical tableau of the photograph Patterned Bodies—produced in advance of COS Players—reflects Cao Fei’s growing interest in street culture, fantasy and performance.

Cao Fei’s artworks have been exhibited in major exhibitions and film festivals worldwide, and are included in many museum collections. In 2007, she will participate in three of the most important international Biennales, at Venice, Istanbul and Lyon.