Shi Xinning

signed with the initials SXN and dated 2006.3 on the reverse

Wedel Fine Art, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

London, Saatchi Gallery, The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art, 2008, pp. 60-61, illustrated in colour 

This work is in generally very good condition. There is some soiling along the white bottom borders of the canvas but is not distracting and seems to be from the hand of the artist. Otherwise there are no apparent condition problems with this work.
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Shi Xinning's art takes the Chinese realist painting tradition in intelligent new directions, often by injecting unexpected elements into well-known historical images. One early painting, for example, took a famous photograph of Mao Zedong inspecting a factory, but substituted Duchamp's famous urinal for the industrial equipment shown in the original. In recent years, he has moved from a black-and-white palette to the colored hues, and from scenes taken from recent Chinese history to scenes of a more global bent, inserting elements which unsettle collective memory by positioning China in situations in which it previously had no role.

In Yalta No.2, Shi Xinning gives Mao a seat at the table of the famous conference between the "Big Three" of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin that took place in February 1945 to plot the future of post-war Europe. Mao appears as the guerrilla leader he would have been in that year, a full four years before he himself became a head of state like the others among whom he is seated. At a moment when so much global speculation centers around what sort of role China will play in the global politics of the future, Shi, perhaps sarcastically, leads us to wonder what today's world might look like if China had already been seated among these great nations nearly 65 years ago.