Qi Peng
974 West Big River Court
Unit 3 Salt Lake City UT 84119
(801) 554-7685
qipeng100776@yahoo.com

Education

Yale University, 1999-2001
Vanderbilt University, 1994-1997

Biography

Qi Peng was born in Queens, New York in 1976. He received his masters degree at Yale University. He is an exponent of Conceptual Minimalism and works with various media ranging from traditional drawing to digitally manipulated photography. Qi Peng currently lives in Salt Lake City.

Artist’s Statement

“My work is concerned with how the media and communication theory impacts the viewer and the message behind the art. All too often, political or philosophical distortion can deliberately increase the signal noise and undermine the semblance of truth. By appropriating and modifying the original source, I can use the same techniques of media and political fiction to achieve a message which is never fixed in its meaning.

For example, the original source photograph can be refashioned into a low-resolution, heavily pixelated image with a reduced number of colors in its palette. Another example is scanning the original source material and cropping a very small section which gets blown up to full resolution and more pixelation. The techniques are essential for showing how much authorities, whether a politician or artist, never choose to play with a full deck to the viewer. My artwork questions the belief of communication theory that if an individual person has more information then the ideas are clearer; this is not the case as advertising provides much meaningless chatter that informs the consumer nothing about the actual product in hand. Good art will use the predominant tools of capitalism to make a self-referential joke about its own presence in the artificial market.

Also, I am an exponent of DAM, otherwise known as the Disposable Arts Movement (which is a combination of Pop Art with Arte Povera techniques with a focus on American themes). Here one tries to incorporate “disposable” or recyclable materials to bring into question the holy permanence of art as an archival form. In fact, DAM artists would be using techniques of mass production especially photocopying to increase the sales volume while providing an ironic critique of the methods of capitalist realism. Novel materials such as vanilla, food stuffs (taking a cue from Dieter Roth), or everyday objects can provide us with an ironic comment on the state of human-ness and remind us of our good nature through gentle or savage satire/humor. By making art more affordable to the general public with lower prices, the message of these types of Conceptual Artists can reach a wider audience than ever possible, thus breaking down the barriers of elitism and cliches of power.”

Website: Qi Peng Art Studio
Contact email: qipeng100776@yahoo.com