Catalogues - My Monkey King

Chi Peng has utilized traditional folklore legend Journey to the West, and has integrated this with his childhood memory, the growing pains and joys, and his observation of and thinking about the reality. He has dexterously and amply used the new media—digital photography — to present his personal dilemma and predicament, thus resulting in the meaningful modal fascination of his series.

The new works of Chi Peng such asThe Great Wall, The Stealing of the Peaches, Auction, Fiery Mountain, Women Kingdom, derive the magic not from the dazzling bewitchment of narration but from the metamorphosis of the real scenes and Monkey King that evokes another reality in art. This thus expresses the artist's ridicule and criticism of reality and which has given a completely new meaning to Chi Peng's works, different from the vilification or self-ridicule of the contemporary Avant-garde art from 1990s and onwards. In other words, his works draw on the magic resources from traditional Chinese culture, on the stories from the ironic Journey to the West, and on all the wonders, magic and unearthly entities that pervade the realm of imagination, to castigate the varied forms of current social ills. His aesthetic creations have also become the humanistic personification of the artist thanks to their occult significance.