Info about Tu Hongtao’s art

The last two decades have seen a rise in prominence of a variety of individuals whose work has navigated the boundaries and limitations of what might consider Chinese. Born in Chengdu in 1976, Tu Hongtao has emerged as a representative of a generation of artists whose oeuvre has focused on this very journey of national self-discovery. Though he is a contemporary of such artists as Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun and Feng Zhengjie, Tu Hongtao has created works which are the representation of a world of virtual pleasures, images, technology and dreams. Rooted in the aesthetics of Animamix (Animation and Comics), a term describing the marriage of the world of the visual fine art with the fundamentals of animation and cartoons. Tu Hongtao’s paintings witness the rapidity of change at work in both our physical spaces and in an individual’s emotional state. They focus on creating cityscapes juxtaposing modern technology advances with figures that are doll-like in proportion and construction, stress the lack of coordination between the human condition and contemporary urban lifestyle. In so doing his works emphasize the vulnerability of the individual human being. Eschewing a practice that has become common in contemporary Chinese painting focusing on the importance of the brand names, advertisement and modern labels. His paintings instead feature surrealistic technique (both in terms of composition and subject) highlighting the modernization of a traditional culture in an entirely new way.