Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts’ latest exhibit in Las Vegas celebrates Chinese conceptual photography – Las Vegas Magazine

China faced a second cultural revolution after the debut of digital cameras. As the world’s second-most populous country moved toward its version of a market economy in the ’90s, its photographers began experimenting with digital photography long before it could be posted to the world via social media. Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art’s From Grain to Pixel: Contemporary Chinese Photography draws on that period to shed light on a previously underrepresented period in art history.

The transition from analog to digital technology created a sea change for visual artists. Precious film stock was less of a costly liability and memory chips enabled near-infinite exposures. Approaches to composition, technique and post-work changed. Chinese artists gathered in new creative enclaves and took more risks.

From Grain to Pixel covers the period of 1993 to 2006 and draws on the visions of 14 artists. A vine-festooned gateway entrance provides a transition from the outer world to the abundance of imagery inside. An illuminated cityscape covers one wall and wish tags hang from gold chains, with visitors encouraged to make one and tie it to a chain.

Large-scale works sometimes feature artists as central characters, such as Wang Qingsong’s 1999 photo Requesting Buddha No. 1. Buddhist iconography and digital manipulation are used to create an 11-armed figure with symbols of commercialism and consumerism in each hand. He draws on art history for panoramic Romantique, which pays homage to Manet, Botticelli and Masaccio in an elaborate multicharacter scene.

Photo: Jenks Imaging

Installation view from left to right: ©Hong Lei, After the Dynasty: Ma Lin’s Fragrance with Sparse Shadow (Song Dynasty), (1999) and ©Huang Yan, Chinese Landscape No. 8 (1999), Chinese Landscape No. 1 (1999) in From Grain to Pixel: Contemporary Chinese Photography, 2024. Artwork courtesy of Private Collector. Image courtesy of Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

Hong Lei, Tong Dazhuang and Cui Xiuwen also stage scenarios inspired by past masters, with the latter’s whimsical Sanjie recreating The Last Supper with a young girl standing in for the apostles. Other artists who use the body as a canvas are Huang Yan, Zhang Huan and Qiu Zhijie, the latter of
whom used brush and ink painting to make patterns on his body that continue on the backgrounds behind him.

Rong Rong and Cang Xin capture fleeting moments of artistic performance. Two of the latter’s Communication Series are close-ups that depict him ritually licking, respectively, a 100 Yuan bill and rusted sheet metal. He places plaster molds of his face on the ground and invited people to smash them for East Village, Beijing (1994, No. 70) and, with Zhang Huan, convinced a group of volunteers to lie naked atop one another to form a pyramid for 1995’s To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain.

The exhibit is bookended by works of repetition and appropriation. Zhang Peili’s Continuous Reproduction is the first work revealed upon entering the gallery and depicts Mao-era peasant girls in a series of 15 images that deteriorate further with each take, representing fading memories of China’s past.

The penultimate piece in a counterclockwise tour of the gallery is Untitled (Andy Warhol). Inspired by Warhol’s Chairman Mao series of silkscreens, Tong Dazhuang lines up rows of Warhol portraits starting at a size smaller than a postage stamp to create a noisy canvas that demands to be looked at from different distances.

Bellagio. 702.693.7871. bellagio.mgmresorts.com

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