Thursday, February 28, 2008

hong hao



hong hao was born in beijing in 1965.

hong hao is an artist who moves so close to the confusion of modern society that he actually sources out its more lyrical, poetic, beautiful qualities. through the heaping together of various objects, hong hao lays bare the core of societies' obsession with quantity and finds the quality embedded in the relationships between and inside basically worthless objects.

the deluge of images caused by the massive digitization of the chinese experience and the rapid development in china's economy, including the parallel creation of a culture of mass consumption and its corollary mass detritus, have had a great effect on chinese society, especially in urban areas. i saw an article in which it was stated that the massive new beijing airport took less time to build than the english took to complete an environmental study for the new addition to heathrow airport.

in taking familiar objects, he deconstructs and then rebuilds them, to reveal another reality filled with beauty and a sense of unbalance. the sort of unbalance we observe in the logarithmic growth of the chinese infrastructure and its financial underpinnings.


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