As one of China's leading young contemporary artists, Chi Peng's photography works consistently place the artist himself as protagonist. Revealing his inner thoughts and emotions, fantasies and dreams, Chi Peng playfully yet painstakingly uses the medium of photography to create poetic narrative compositions that focus on the question of the individual and identity amidst the hyper development of 21st century China. 

In his most recent suite of large-format panoramic photographs, “Mood Is Never Better than Memory” Chi Peng presents a contemplative seascape of the artist's hometown, Yantai, Shandong Province, China. Sky, water and seabirds as well as Chi Peng’s alter-ego character give the viewer clues to the artist’s intended narrative: illusive love, fleeting emotion, happiness in memory, solitude, finding one's inner peace. Through masterfully composed scenes, Chi Peng explores once more themes of identity, isolation and freedom and a desire to evoke with images a certain fleeting mood faded by the passing of time. In the two “Catcher” panoramas based on J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, Chi places in one a host of children in a wheat field marching toward their future and, tellingly, scarecrows in the other.

Chi Peng (b. 1981) was born in Shandong Province, China, and graduated in 2005 from the Digital Media Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His works have been exhibited in major museums and art institutions around the world, including a solo exhibition at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, the Pompidou Center in Paris, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Cobra Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Seoul. He currently lives and works in Beijing

Exhibition courtesy of M97 Gallery, Shanghai

*Exhibition Opening Times*

Tuesdays - Saturdays 10am until 5pm (8pm on the first Thursday of the month)

Sundays 12pm until 5pm