Shen Jingdong 沈敬东

"A story of Heroes"

For many contemporary Chinese artists, the iconography of their nation has served as the main source of inspiration and creation.

Whether by Mao depictions, military guards, heroic peasant farmers, established artists such as Wang Qingsong and Wang Guangyi used the visual vocabulary of Chinese popular culture to illustrate and criticize the ruling party in all its many ways.

Artist Shen Jingdong also uses these communist icons in his paintings and sculptures, he paints the soldiers and the universe that surrounded him during his sixteen years in the army, but he does it in an entirely new way .

After his artistic training at "Art College of Nanjing", Shen Jingdong enlisted in the Chinese army in 1991. Assigned to serve in the military theater troupe, he helped produce musicals, entirely dedicated to sing the praises of communism and his military machine, with a good dose of theatricality.

Shen Jingdong presents his soldiers in the brightest light with Mao Zedong's icons, Japanese comics, terracotta warriors from ancient tombs and child soldiers in the Eight Route Army. For him, they are not just machines to kill, but rather consumer objects, toys, straight out of a department store radius, which can be manipulated at will.

In Shen's paintings, soldiers, workers and peasants, have new faces that were apparently cast in plastic, reflecting the light.
These smiling faces seem to be a new brand coming straight out of an assembly line.

Shen Jingdong uses these historical images of Communist China and goes beyond them. it is also the most important point in the artist's work. It also focuses on the power and economic growth, reform, future and thinking of China in the 21st century world.

Submitted by Galerie Dock Sud