Art Plural Gallery is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Chinese artist Tian Taiquan, to inaugurate the Third Floor project at Art Plural Gallery.

The artist, born in Chongqing, China vividly expresses the living scar weighing on his country since the Cultural Revolution. Covering and unfolding memories through photography montages, the artist tangles reality and fiction creating a witness of history in a colourful yet violent graveyard.

“The Cultural Revolution impressed me so much when I was a child, that it is the permanent inspiration of my creation. It needs to be explored constantly. I still remember the period when red flags and Dazibao were at everywhere on the street. The horrified violence in Chongqing was very famous in my motherland and became my fertile resources.” – Tian Taiquan.

For this exhibition, Art Plural Gallery presents 12 photographs from the Totem series. Lying on a red and infinite landscape of stigmatised Mao figures, the nudity of a dead woman body is sacrificed on the altar of communism. Raping sensuality, a green military suit with a glittering badge stands as the character’s only piece of clothing. As if swallowed by an immense propaganda sea, semi buried women go unnoticed as their blood merges with the red abyss of the Revolution. Tied up with thick and solid ropes, some convey the impossibility to differ or escape from the unique party’s path.

Paradoxically evocative, Tian Taiquan’s photographs address both desires and sufferings leaving the viewer with an ambiguous bitter sweet feeling. With the use of digital technologies, bright colours and sensual poses, the artist visually injects life into the depicted horror. Linking past and present, Tian Taiquan reasons the never-ending dilemma of memory.

Image: © Tian Taiquan, Art Plural Gallery