Artlog

A Snapshot of Chinese Urban Street Life

Zhao Bo’s paintings depict the fast paced and constantly changing city life of China. The scenes are more like pictures taken in front of a cardboard backdrop than candid photos, and just like arranged photos they are snapshots of happy moments. The arrangement and concentration of socially significant elements give the viewer a strong sense of the city’s atmosphere, appearance and intensity. The characters, all who seem to be posing, always bear broad smiles and eager looks.

The settings are quite similar: always outdoor, they show how the physical features of cities are becoming more and more modern and international, but in a unique fashion. This urban environment is genuinely Chinese, not only because of the characters shown in the mix of advertisement and propaganda signs, but also through an ensemble of towering buildings, resulting from the construction race, which embodies the struggle for modernity. Sometimes iconic landmarks or traditional Chinese architectural features are present too, as they are in actual Chinese cities. The artist exaggerates perspective to heighten the background’s drama and often adds oversized objects, such as a loudspeaker, the organ of propaganda and discipline, or symbols of the Western consumerism, such as Mickey Mouse, for emphasis.

Zhao Bo’s characters are meant to represent Chinese people sociologically, not ethnically, as they do not have Asian features. The artist renders their human nature, desires and emotions with an accomplished tenderness and sympathy. Social class and function appear through attire, which can be a cute dress, an army green military suit, a Western suit, a Chinese qipao or a Tibetan coat. Businessmen, students, soldiers, pretty girls, parking lot employees and street vendors coexist in his work, just as they do in the streets. It is very interesting that Zhao Bo chose the setting were everyone intermingles. They all belong to the community of Chinese citizens but are differentiated by their looks, something brought about by this new society’s materialistic turn.

The interaction between people and with the urban environment is documented through the characters’ gaze and posture. Their eyes are showing their desire to be part of this new world. Each person embodies motivations and goals of the new society, which are a mix of the traditional, the communist and the materialist. The happy young couple illustrates the importance of finding a partner, the proud soldier bearing a gun the importance of serving the nation, and the person wearing fitness clothes the importance of exercize. The inclusion of exotic elements such as a Basset Hound, a foreign dog, illustrates changing customs such as having dogs as household pets.

After years of frugal conditions of living, whether under the Emperors or a Communist era, many Chinese are finding the market economy is opening new horizons and triggering new desires. Zhao Bo portrays his contemporaries experiencing happiness on this fresh, urban stage.

Laure Raibaut, Beijing August 2008