MIAO XIAOCHUN – Microcosm

Miao Xiaochun, Microcosm (photographs, computer animation, textile)

Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Miao Xiaochun in Poland. Under the title Microcosm, the artist reinterprets images sourced from the canon of European art history by using digital photography and animation to add new meanings to these traditional subjects.

The large-scale photographs, while maintaining a resemblance of the original art work, also have a contemporary meaning. This is achieved by the use of new media, as well as by themes “smuggled” inside still and moving images. The language of Miao Xiaochun’s work expresses urgent problems of the modern world, such as environmental crisis, violence, war and highlights the necessity of protecting the planet on which we live and saving mankind.

Microcosm is a reflection of people look at the facts of life and death, at the failures and weaknesses of human existence. It is also the embodiment of sensitivity and the feelings of the artist.

Works selected for the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok include a series inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings.  This large-scale landscape which envisions the fate of the damned of society is reinterpreted by Miao Xiaochun, although the artist retreats from the convention of single perspective and replaces it, accordingly to Chinese artistic tradition, with multiple perspective views.  An exceptional work included in the exhibition is a textile work, in which the embodiment of technological endeavor is laboriously reproduced by hand: the Microsoft Windows interface is made in embroidery on silk.

Miao Xiaochun (born in 1964) lives and works in Beijing, China. His works were presented in many prestigious exhibitions including: Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China presented at the International Center for Photography and Asia Society, New York, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2004-2006); Busan Biennale (2008); China: Facing Reality, MUMOK, Vienna, and RED HOT – Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA (2007) and selected solo shows, among them, MACROMANIA, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, (2010); Index, White Space Beijing, Pekin (2009), Painting + Imagination, Osage Contemporary Art Space, Hong Kong (2006). The artist is represented by Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin-Beijing.