qi peng

974 West Big River Court

Unit 3

Salt Lake City UT 84119

(801) 879-1971

qipeng100776@yahoo.com

born 1976, Queens, New York City, New York

lives and works in Salt Lake City

education

1999-2001 Yale University, New Haven

1994-1997 Vanderbilt University, Nashville

solo exhibitions

2008 [in progress], nobrow coffee and tea company gallery, Salt Lake City

monochromes, Addicted Cafe, Salt Lake City

colorless monochromes, atelier 180 gallery, Salt Lake City

phuck picasso, Red Light Books, Salt Lake City

2007 selections from alchemy of history, model.citizen gallery, Salt Lake City

industrial landscapes, modern8 gallery, Salt Lake City

group exhibitions

2008 [in progress], Iao Gallery, Salt Lake City

2007 selected works on paper, atelier 180 gallery, Salt Lake City

qi peng: installation, Iao Gallery, Salt Lake City

bibliography

2007 Rossiter, Shawn, �Qi Peng Events,� 15 BYTES, December 2007, p. 8

Rossiter, Shawn, �Qi Peng Events,� 15 BYTES, November 2007, p. 8

public collections

modern8, Salt Lake City

catalogues and publications

industrial landscapes, modern8 gallery, Salt Lake City, 2007

the decline and fall of the american empire (book sculpture), lulu.com,

Salt Lake City, 2007

artist�s websites

http://www.iao-gallery.com/qipeng.html

http://www.iao-gallery.com/artistbios/qipengportfolio2.pdf

http://stores.lulu.com/qipengart

http://galleries.absolutearts.com/cgi-bin/galleries/show?what=artists&id=2191&login=iaogallery

http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/07nov/page8.html

http://modern8.com/gallery/qi_peng.html

http://www.arsny.com/p.html

http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/07dec/page8.html

biography

qi peng was born in Queens, New York in 1976. He received his masters degree at Yale University. He is a conceptual artist who works with various media ranging from traditional drawing to digitally manipulated photography. The artist currently lives near downtown Salt Lake City. qi peng�s paintings and sculptures are represented currently by the Iao Gallery (www.iao-gallery.com) in Salt Lake City; his works on paper are represented by atelier 180 (www.atelier180.com) in Salt Lake City. He is also a member of the Artists Rights Society (ARS).

artist’s statement (conceptual artist)

“My work is concerned with how the media and communication theory impacts the all-consumed 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, very pixilated counterfeit image with a reduced number of colors in its palette. Another example is scanning the original source material and cropping a very small section that gets blown up to beyond full resolution thus encountering further pixelation. These 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 and Fluxus techniques with a particular focus on philosophical themes on American commercialism). 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 or laser printing to increase the sales volume while providing an ironic critique of the methods of capitalist realism. Novel and typical materials such as vanilla, coffee, chocolate, food stuffs, or everyday objects can provide us with an ironic comment on the state of dehumanization and remind us of our essential 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 using the methods of self-dissolved capitalism and ironic outsourcing and cost-cutting, thus breaking down the barriers of elitism and cliches of consumerism and power by faking the aura of rarity. Nothing is sacred here, as any method or end product is acceptable as long as the concept was executed to the artist�s spiritual satisfaction of displacing the real with the counterfeit life.”

artist’s statement (minimalist)

“My minimalist paintings (including gallery walls) and drawings (on paper and mostly canvas) are a distillation of the eternal conflict between spirituality and materiality, which has been a major theological problem since the beginning of time. I have chosen to paint so much nothingness using materials of something-ness; in order to achieve texture without any color, I have chosen to paint with a brush using only acrylic media or oil media as either transparent or translucent substances to be applied onto all types of supports ranging from canvas to wood panel to aluminum foil.

Using these media helps me to build up the thick, emotional textures of impasto without the distraction of color (white, black, etc.) to signify an uncertain purity and to show that a painting�s existence is dependent on how the light is reflected from the surface that makes my paintings extremely variable to the viewer�s eyes. Also, my work is influenced by the texture of topographical maps. For me, to paint fairly colorless objects permits me to capture the unspeakable acts which Wittgenstein�s concept of silence becomes a material and archaeological being that is hard to detect by a simple, passing glance.”

Website: qi peng art studio
Contact email: qipeng100776@yahoo.com