Profiled: Chen Hangfeng

Profiled is a weekly CreativeHunt column introducing the ouvres of artists living and working in Shanghai, or showing their work here in a forthcoming exhibition.

Chen Hangfeng is a Shanghai artist slash designer in his mid-thirties, skyrocketing to fame these days. He's been exhibiting in group shows since 1996. In 2007, Hangfeng's work was featured in Biljana Ciric's "Rejected Collection" exhibition. Now he has two major solo shows on his CV, and back-to-back exhibitions this week -- the man is anything but rejected.

In the last few years, Hangfeng has garnered much praise for branching out into many media, continuously challenging himself and his viewers with new approaches to similar themes. In 2005 and 2006, he was focused on paper cutting. Hangfeng gave the traditional Chinese craft a new modern significance by filling his designs with miniature logos from famously despicable Western chains. The McDonald's "M", Nike swooshes, Adidas logos, leaping Puma cats, Gucci G's -- all of these appear within the intricate makings of traditional Chinese paper cut motifs -- birds, double happiness, you get the idea.



Then he switched media. The logomania theme moved from red bamboo paper to sticky temporary tattoo form. Then carpets. Then silkscreened wallpaper, acrylic carvings, snowflakes stuck onto windows, machine embroidery, a carved elm logomania folding screen, and digital work.

Let's not forget his controversial break in the flow: "Just Poo It". Hangfeng's reflection on brand infiltration moved downward and inward with this work. He produced a fake "poo" in the shape of a Nike swoosh, and put it where it belongs -- the toilet. His statement said after wearing head-to-toe Nike, "one morning he realized that even his shit was shaped like a Nike Logo," and he wondered "is there something wrong with his stomach or his mind?"



Adbusters thought it was a funny, absurd extension of Hangfeng's themes. They featured the poster on their website and in a video, still available online here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwpCJpS7cQU. Don't worry, sophisticated readers. The offending fecal matter was made of plastic putty and oil paint. "No turds were harmed in the creation of this poster", he assured viewers in a statement about the piece.

While some people may be have... such delicate sensibilities... that they cannot appreciate Hangfeng's BM-based art, he has proven he is capable of many other forms. This is the reason for his broad, and growing, appeal. Hangfeng is a multi-talented artist. His oeuvre is extensive and varied, parts of it even bordering on investigative journalism. In Christ MASS Production, Hangfeng revealed the other side of Christmas hype. He filmed a documentary of the Zhejiang factories where the world's decorations are manufactured, providing incisive views on globalization and waste.





You can see Hangfeng's video of chickens consuming a KFC logo made of rice at 800Show, now until September 30. Head to Building 2 at 800 Changde Lu near Changping Lu for that. If you missed his Luxurious Riffraff chandelier from his Art Labor solo show last winter, you can check that out here too. Yet another medium and another take on his consumerism/waste themes, Hangfeng produced this one from three months of garbage collecting and sterilizing. Wires are bedecked with colourful soda cans, plastic toys, footwear, water bottles, and clear beads in between.

What's next for Hangfeng? Another group show starting Friday September 18th, running to October 12th, at Shanghai Times Square (part of German Week). And we hope, maybe a piece about the Expo? When government censors were ensuring that expat news pumped out nothing but praise about the Olympics, Hangfeng dared to challenge the meaning of China's greatest triumph, focusing instead on its commercial underpinnings.



Pure. Cojones.

Check Cheng Hangfeng out on the web here.