HONG HAO
Artist Biography
Hong Hao (Chinese, b.1965, Beijing, China) is a Contemporary photographer from Beijing. He attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he studied in the Printmaking Department, and has been exhibited internationally since 1988. After graduating in 1989, Hong created his first major series, a group of prints resembling Chinese maps, executed with a remarkable attention to detail. The artist began working with photography in 1999, and, in 2001, began his most well-known series, My Things. In this collection of works, Hong individually scanned hundreds of common objects and arranged them into tightly spaced compositions. The objects float among black space and appear to viewers as controlled chaos. By arranging the scanned images according to their forms and colors, he destructs the functional property of the materials and reproduces an undifferentiated, flattened, deliberately superficial world of aesthetics. This series explores Chinese consumer culture, and captures the artist reflecting on his own life of acquisition and materialism. While Hong Hao continues to work with found objects, “AS IT IS,” his recent solo exhibition, deals with the physical forms in a more straightforward manner, creating an interesting dialectic development of both the vocabulary and concept of his art.
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Hong is one of China’s leading Contemporary artists, and his work reflects his careful observational skills and wit. His work has been featured in many group and solo shows around the world, including “Hong Hao's Elegant Gathering” (solo) and “Hong Hao's Reading Room” (solo) at Chambers Fine Art, New York, USA in 2007 and 2004 respectively; Hong Hao at Rencontres d'Arles (solo), 2003, Arles, France; “The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989” (group) at ZKM - Museum of Contenporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2011; “Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography”(group) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2010; “Book/Shelf” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); and “Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video”, shown at the San Diego Museum of Art, USA, Shanghai Art Museum, and the National Art Museum of China, between 2004 and 2005. Hong Hao’s work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the British Museum; Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, among others.
