Who Am I - Self-Portrait
He Pengqi
贺鹏琪
Production date
2012
Object Detail
Media
mineral pigments on wood
Measurements
50.5 x 53 x 3 cm
Notes
As the dreamy, introverted son of two school teachers, He Pengqi’s favourite pastime as a child was collecting ‘interesting things’ from rubbish bins and around the streets. Later, as an art student, he realised that this unusual childhood hobby provided him with ways to make a new kind of painting, and break away from some of the conventions that frustrated his creativity. Who Am I – Self-Portrait (2012) depicts the artist as a grey-suited man, as blandly anonymous as Magritte’s bowler-hatted Everyman. But his large timber ‘ears’ are opened wide to reveal a complex multi-levelled interior space of floors connected by ladders and looping chains. The artist explains that the different floors represent different levels of thinking, the complexity and contradictions of the internal monologue. The smallest room symbolizes his most secret inner self: the door is open, yet it’s empty and isolated. A system of brass clockwork gears and wheels surrounded by fleshy pink clouds seems to be operating this whole ecosystem, while at the bottom of the face, a bicycle and an umbrella represent the artist’s first love. The stereotypical exterior of the man-in-the-suit belies the richness of his interior life of thoughts, desires and daydreams.
Accession number
2015.244