The Gao Brothers Go Global
A little-known pop art duo from a small Chinese city in Shangdong Province, Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, used Adobe Photoshop, Outlook Express, and their desktop PC to create a global audience for their work. Their "e-mail exhibitions" contain electronic postcards whose playfully subversive images pose challenging questions about contemporary Chinese culture, politics, and society. Read Alexa Olesen's interview with the Gao Brothers.



Chen and Dancers: Moves Through Culture
In its new performance "Bian Dan," Chen and Dancers whirl bamboo poles to conjure ethnic history and bridge cultural divides between China and America. Read Alexa Olesen's "Chen & Dancers"



Li Zhenhua Does it All
29-year-old painter, producer, and promoter Li Zhenhua pursues a career in China which would have been virtually unheard of two decades ago. "I got into the arts kind of by accident," says Li. Read Li Zhenhua Does it All by Jerry Chan.



Li Xianting Talks with Virtual China
Li Xianting is the picture of a friendly tree sprite, but he is a deadly serious art critic and the patron saint of the Chinese avant-garde and Chinese performance art. Read Alexa Olesen's Li Xianting.



Rugged Tibetans, Punk Artistes
Xing Danwen's New York Adventure
Xing Danwen is weary and chain smoking. As usual, she's been working around the clock. Tired as she is, though, the 33-year-old looks younger than her age -- a bit waif-like, observant, and in her own way, intense. She fits right in at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where crowds of 20-somethings scuttle between darkrooms, classrooms, and Macintosh computers.(more).




Zhang Hongtu fled Maoist China and traveled across mountains and streams to Manhattan, the city where he now lives and where he found his inspiration to combine the 10th-century painting style of Fan Kuan with the mood of the Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh. Read Alexa Olesen's Breaking Free, Flying High: Zhang Hongtu's Journey from Maoism to Modern Art.



    The "New English Calligraphy" at right is a sample of the work of Soho artist Xu Bing, as are the Virtual China characters on our front page. For a closer look at this interesting Chinese artist now living in New York, and whose work "offers a potent antidote to the all-too-familiar Western habit of exoticising all things Oriental", read our interview with Xu Bing.


No time to travel to Asia Society for the spectacular photography exhibit, "China: 50 Years Inside the People's Republic"? Read about it here and catch a glimpse of a "wide spectra of modern Chinese life - urban to rural, personal to public, bedroom to boardroom, from Sunday at church to Saturday at the vegetable market." Doug McGill gives his impressions of this fascinating exhibit of photography.