Feng Mengbo

signed in Chinese, titled in English and numbered 1/10



Executed in 1996.

Guangdong, Guangdong Museum of Art, The First Guangzhou Triennial. Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1900-2000), 2002, p. 197
MOCA, Taipei, Past Virtualized - Future Cloned: Feng Mengbo 1994-2003, 2003, illustrated in catalogue

Chang, J TZ, Feng Mengbo: Built to Order: r_drawworld 0, Hong Kong, 2006

Generally in good condition.
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Feng Mengbo's career has evolved in parallel not only with the development of Chinese contemporary art, but also, and more importantly, with the tremendous advances in technology witnessed in recent decades.  Although it was the printmaking department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1991, Feng obtained his first computer in 1993 and was immediately captivated by new media technology.  Included in numerous early exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art abroad - China's New Art, Post-1989, Mao Goes Pop, and the Venice Biennale, all in 1993, and in all of which he showed paintings - Feng subsequently assumed the distinction of being China's first computer artist, and certainly still one of its best.  Indeed, Feng is among the most engaging and consistently reflective of artists working with new media technologies worldwide, which justifies the impressive list of internationally significant exhibitions in which he has participated:  the biennials of Kwangju, Lyon, Johannesburg, as well as the landmark Documenta X exhibition in Kassel, Germany, all in 1997 alone.  In 2002, he was again selected for Documenta XI and, rumor has it, was also on the shortlist of artists for Documenta XII in 2007 (in which his work did not ultimately appear).  Consistently forging new ground in the space where artist, technology, and the audience meet, Feng Mengbo continues to make critically engaged interventions that resonate beyond the world of Chinese contemporary art.  The variety of works offered here highlights the development of Feng's practice up to his most recent interests.      

 

My Private Album (Lot 1122), was an early manifestation of digital interactivity in the art world, a CD-ROM-based installation in which viewers can navigate through the lives of three generations of Feng's family under the four entries of "Grandparents," "Parents," "Xiaozheng and Me," and "Hong Xiao Bing's Cinema."  Pictures, documents and generations crowd together in this extended, open remembrance of the artist's family, which is no longer 'his private album', but rather one for all of us to discover.  Between the 1996 My Private Album and the 1999 Q3 (Lot 1123), Feng produced Taking Mt. Doom By Strategy (1997), a video-game and CD-ROM of animated collages in which family photos, bits of the video game Doom, and excerpts from a nationalistic 1970's historical action film, The Taking of Mount Tiger, were combined together.  Here we see a conflation of the personal, the historical, and the video game world of play that would subsequently be more eloquently interwoven in the artist's work as technology continued to advance; Q3 was a leap forward in this regard.   

Q3 is a computer-generated, 32-minute video work in which Feng plays the role of a war correspondent amongst robot soldiers who are disposable stand-ins for humans.  The real Feng appears with his camera, circulating in the shoot 'em up video game world, the effect of which is to splice the real and the virtual in a strangely affecting commentary on war and violence.  Interestingly, towards the end of the video, Feng takes up the cause of the unfortunate robot soldiers.  The work takes its title from the popular first-person multi-player shooter game "Quake," which was designed by id software, the same company that made the earlier block-buster games Doom and Mortal Kombat.  Quake 3, released in 1999, was written as open code software, which allowed players to customize the game and which Feng would exploit in subsequent works.  As his first filmic adventure and the first to seamlessly combine the two worlds in a single spatial environment, Q3 marks an important moment in the artist's career.

In 2005, Feng Mengbo returned to painting, but as one would expect, his reengagement was anything but traditional.  M1106 (Lot 1125) and Q 2006LII16 (Lot 1124) are representative examples of the artist's recent computer-based painterly work, the latter taking the artist's work inside first-person shooter games as its subject matter.  The compositions are designed and their contents modeled by computer; the results are eventually printed with a sophisticated VeeJet printer, which can print on a variety of different surfaces.  With such works Feng has in mind what he calls "built to order painting," in which the customer/collector can order a painting of his or her own design on the Internet, choosing from amongst a set of variables, and have the work executed, printed and delivered by the artist.  Although these technically advanced paintings are fascinating examples of the artist's practice, there is undoubtedly a critical thrust lodged in this body of work.  As Feng explains,

 

In the contemporary art world, most artists have become producers for and beneficiaries of the art market consciously engaged in a process of creating made-to-order products for their actual or imagined clientele.  Whether they admit it or not, the entire art circle is involved in this implicit conspiracy.  The shameless posturings of rugged individuality and non-conformity are a mere myth, an attempt to deceive the self and others; and artists are reduced to mere product labels. 

I am on a mission to destroy this myth; and my satirical model of the Internet economy [the built-to-order model] is a possible method of accomplishing this.[1] 

 

A fascinating return in the Feng Mengbo's practice, the computer-based veejet paintings of the last few years are no less forward-looking than his previous work.  While we may be made uncomfortable by the spotlight Feng shines upon the artist as market producer, we may also appreciate in this powerfully rebellious gesture the rare reappearance of the authentically avant-garde.

[1] Feng Mengbo, "History Built to Order," Built to Order: r_drawworld 0.  Hong Kong:  Hanart TZ, 2006, 8-13, p. 13.