The multidisciplinary artist Hong Hao is known for his whimsical manipulation and transformation of images. His interest in photography and graphic arts traces back to his time in the Printmaking Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Playing with scanned and assembled images of various found objects including maps, scroll paintings, receipts, and commercial advertisements, his works probe into the geopolitical and cultural background of the contemporary Chinese society and disrupts the shaped perception of the post-Mao China.

For ‘Spring Festival along the River #6’, Hong Hao juxtaposes a series of colored documentations of modern Beijing with the ink depiction of the Song Dynasty capital at Kaifeng. The side-by-side presentation of the contemporary camera language and the Song masterpiece intrigues the viewer with his nostalgic yet ever-changing gaze on the cityscape. Contemporary consumerism has always been a major theme of Hong Hao’s creation, this work is another vivid demonstration of Hong’s sharp observation and playful commentary on the growing culture of consumption in China.

Deeply immersed in traditional Chinese culture and yet cunningly detached from it, Hong Hao continues to amaze the audience with both his technical virtuosity and artistic insight. ‘Spring Festival along the River’ is one of the most striking and notable of the artist’s idiosyncratic photo experiments. Garnering critical and institutional acclaim, it was showcased twice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Over the years, the artist’s work has entered the collections of major museums including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.