“This art is all about people: their lives, their ideals, their entanglements, their gatherings, their loneliness.” -Cao Yingbin

Born Zhengzhou City, Henan, 1971

If viewers’ first reaction to his whimsical sculptures and paintings is to laugh, Cao Yingbin is fine with that. “I laugh myself when I’m making them,” he says.  “Reality is absurd. For me things start getting real only when I start drawing and forget who I am.”  His People’s Park (2009) presents three surgical trays on which are neatly arrayed tiny human organs and heads of Mickey Mouse, Astro Boy and the Monkey King.  The title pokes fun at the Chinese Communists’ habit of attaching the word “people’s” to everything, from the republic to banks and newspapers. Buy and Sell (2008) assigns prices in US dollars or renminbi (the people’s currency) to similarly dismembered items: $370,000 for Donald Duck’s head; RMB960,000 for a human heart, and RMB39,300 for a pair of eyeballs. “In China these days, we are only small figures without the right to speak out,” the artist comments.  His surreal collages underscore the topsy-turvy nature of values throughout the modern world.

Publications

People's Park

Biography

1971: Born in Henan Province
1995: BFA, Henan University
Now lives and works in Zhengzhou, Henan Province

Selected Exhibitions

2009: “Attitude”, Shit - Art Center, Zhengzhou
2009: “In The Mood For Paper”, F2 Gallery, Bejing
2008: “Crouching Paper, Hidden Dragon”, F2 Gallery, Beijing
2008: “REPLY TO ASIA”, Henan Art Museum, Zhengzhou
2007: “Representing the Commune”, Luoyang, China [solo exhibition]
2007: “Cao Yingbin,” Zhengzhou [solo exhibition]
2006: “No One Can Beat Me”, Aura Gallery, Shanghai, China [solo exhibition]
2007: “Who Is the Hero”, Zhengzhou [solo exhibition]
2005: “Time”, Zhengzhou Sculpture Painting and Calligraphy Institute, Zhengzhou
2005 “Henan Youth Oil Painting Invitation Exhibition”, Zhengzhou
2001: “Henan Oil Painting Exchange Exhibition”, Zhengzhou
1999: “Henan Youth Fine Art Exhibition”, Henan Museum, Zhengzhou
1998: “Henan Youth Oil Painting Exhibtion”, Zhengzhou
1997: “Henan Oil Painting Exchange Exhibition”, Zhengzhou
1997: “Henan Oil Painting Exhibition”, National Art Museum of China, Beijing
1996: “Cao Yingbin,” Henan Painting and Calligraphy Institute, Zhengzhou, [solo exhibition]