Tell me a bit about your work showing at PAMM.
This is a survey of my work from about the early 2000s until now. It’s a figurative representation and realism, but also a criticism of realism. It’s a satiric approach to some iconic paintings.
A lot of people refer to you as “an outsider” of both Eastern and Western cultures. What have been some of the advantages for your perspective as an artist having lived in both cultures?
It wasn’t really an advantage, the idea of me being an insider or me being an outsider, it all depends on how they wanna play it. I was always an insider, I was an insider in both China and New York because my practice was part of the new stream art practice. In China though, from time to time, they choose not to include me in their practice. But a lot of Chinese artists have briefly lived abroad or visited.
So is that where the idea of being an outsider came from?
Yeah, exactly. It’s a very typical Chinese game. Even though they include you as an insider, they know you are challenging them, they know you are a threat to them. So they’d rather have you take on a different identity. Like now in China, I’m included in art history books and I’m a founding member of the Stars Group and China avant-garde, there are still certain people they like to promote instead. There’s kind of a circle, like the art mafiosos.
So people were wanting to define your work in terms of who you were as a person or an artist?
Well in China there’s no way to read about my art. Some good artists understand what I’m trying to do. But most people don’t now. Most Chinese art critics are stupid and they always try to define certain art in relation to European art. Now there is a big deal of them being sort of pseudo-intellectual and it’s kind of…volunteer colonialism. They don’t understand how to challenge art history, they’re trying to place more value on European art history than they understand. That’s the problem, that’s the irony. It’s the Chinese and contemporary Chinese art world practicing on a very shallow basis. And the education, I taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, it’s just horrible. I think the Chinese art practice is so hypocritical, they want to please the Western territorials and the local powers and authoritarians, it’s very mixed. I paid dearly for my freedom.