New Works

On an earlier occasion Ni Haifeng (Zhoushan 1964) already showed auto-portraits in the gallery. It was a series of seven photographs of parts of the artist's body, fully tattooed with various blue decorations and texts, so it seemed. The work referred to diverse themes like the trade relations of old between China and the Netherlands, the Chinese identity of the artist and the thin line between public and private.

Again Ni Haifeng is presenting self-portraits, now in a series of three. They are quite different, though, fom the earlier portraits. Unlilke the former self-portraits, which are kind of attractive by their decorative adornments, these later portraits are sullying. Ni Haifeng emptied his trashcan on three different days in 2005, on a monochrome background. He photographed the 'composition' and blew it to a large size (155 x 125 cm). The first picture, shot at March 8, has a dark blue background. The second, dated 1st of April, is on white, and the third one, August 3, on blood red. These three colors are not only to be interpreted as a reference to the Dutch flag, but to the West in general, since many a western country has a flag with these colors. Mercilessly the photos expose the artist's habits and activities. A set of false teeth on a red background, innumerable cigarette butts on the blue one (did he have a hard time, then?) and all sorts of photographic waste material on the white one. All of these are found between other sorts of junk, like tainted banana peels and toe nails. The viewer is staged, as it were, as a tracker, an archeologist of the life of a contemporary artist. He could study the pictures for hours and draw some conclusions from it. The red background, for instance, combined with a piece of Chinese money and a real photograph of the artist with his Chinese features, is at the same time laden with the meaning of the red color of the Peoples Republic of China. Ni Haifeng is a master on this kind of playing with layers of meaning.

The other photographs show aspects of China. Some of them are sullying as well. A market of fake antiques in an inhospitable area, between dilapidated buildings, a rather chaotic sewing studio, an enlarged photo of a false Chinese banknote and photographs of the famous international monuments, poorly remade in miniature. Even the plants and flowers in the parklike setting are done in plastic. The artist has always been interested in the artificial, Through these images the artist knows to have the viewer experience the void which is part of this artificiality. After all, how real is the world we are living in? To what extant does the artificial already have penetrated the domain of the real? These are a few crucial questions Ni Haifeng evokes in his rich body of work.