Untitled
Guo Jian
郭健
Production date
2011
Media
inkjet pigment print
Measurements
180 x 122 cm
Notes
When Guo Jian returned to his hometown after many years away he was horrified to find its scenic beauty marred by pollution and rubbish. His response was to photograph the rubbish (sometimes followed by suspicious policemen) until he had accumulated thousands of images of discarded packaging, paper bags, fast food containers featuring pictures of celebrities. Musing over what has been lost in China’s headlong rush to modernise and urbanise, Guo Jian meticulously incorporated 20,000 of these tiny digital images into a classical landscape painting. Hidden within the gnarled, twisted trees and monumental rock forms painted by Northern Song court painter Guo Xi in 1072 is a dirty secret: the ephemera of a modern throw-away society chokes the river and litters the landscape.
Accession number
2015.502