A recent graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Chi Peng has already exhibited extensively in his homeland and is on the verge of an international career abroad. Born in 1981 in the Shandong Province of Yantai, Chi Peng is considered one of the most promising young artists of China’s new avant-garde. He exhibited at Chambers Fine art in a 2004 group show, One to One and again in 2005 in View Points. He has also exhibited in France, Australia, Denmark and Germany.

Chi Peng’s works heavily rely on the image of body as a catalyst for political and cultural change. “Rather than trading in a Mao suit for a business suit”, he rebels through the street s of China. His photographs of multiple Chi Pengs sprinting stark naked in hallways, through corridors and into China’s modern landscape capture the fast-pace, hectic and consumer -oriented face of “new” China.

For his first solo exhibit at Chambers, Chi Peng turns fantasies into reality. His photographs of passionate sexual encounters set against the backdrop of modern China’s ubiquitous locations, such as telephone booths and office cubicles, have a hyper-realistic quality. On close observation, these lovers in amorous copulation are in fact both Chi Peng. Not one to shy away from bold statements, Chi Peng’s images are deliberately provocative . This affirmation of self-love and bold sexual desire, once discouraged, is now slowly accepted in a more liberal and tolerant China. By casting himself into these urban dreamscapes, Chi Peng reminds us of the alienation one can feel in a country of billions.

His audacious use of nudity has become part of his repertoire and his ongoing experiments with self representation challenge the viewer to reflect on issues of identity in the modern world. Chi Peng’s first one-person exhibition in the West is a bench-mark not only in the rapid development of his own art but of the dramatic transformation in the social landscape of contemporary China.

Catalogue Available