Guoting Manufacturing Catalogue Series—Jinhua Microscope
Chen Mingqiang
陈明强
Production date
2011
Object Detail
Media
pen and ink, watercolour and acrylic on paper
Measurements
180 x 40 cm
Notes
Chen Mingqiang’s work examines social and personal relationships in a time of flux and fast-paced modernity. The Guoting Manufacturing Catalogue Series of watercolour paintings, for example, recalls Duchamp’s conflation of the mechanical and the sexual in The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915–23), which was reconstructed by British Pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1965-6. In images that are also reminiscent of the inventively absurd Pop machinery of Eduardo Paolozzi, Chen Mingqiang combines unrelated instruments such as microscopes, guns and trumpets into unlikely new products. Enormously elongated, elaborate and decorative, with smaller mechanical parts stacked one upon the other rather like the segmented bodies of strange insect-like creatures, the Hero Brand Assembly Horn, the Microscope, Jinhua Model and the Invincible Brand Submachine Gun suggest ritual objects for unimaginable ceremonies, or sex aids for aliens.
Accession number
2013.163