randian | 燃点

Barlach Halle K is proud to announce the opening of Ni Shaofeng and Deng Huaidong second show ‘Remembering – Reminiscing’ on November 9, 2016. The year of 2016 was marked the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution in China, which started in 1966. For the two artists it is a good opportunity to explore the process of memory of historical events artistically.

In the early 1980s, Ni Shaofeng and Deng Huaidong were Art students, specialising in painting at the University of Education Shandong in Jinan. At that time, Mao’s death was fairly recent and the cultural revolution of 1976 had already ended, followed by a moderate liberalisation.

All of them, through their works of art, make reference to specific patterns found in pictures used for propaganda during the Cultural Revolution. In order to do this, they recall motives and stylistic singularities of the model on the one hand while offering a contrast depicted in stylistic devices and methodical techniques on the other.

This means that the artists’ works are not alternative paintings made to counter the histrionic message expressed throughout the collection of pictures used in the Cultural Revolution. Their response is subtler. They transfigure the original material, which is a typographically reproduced photograph, into a manufactured painting. And the way they do this reflects their response to the original picture.