Listings Art Events Worldwide Chen Man solo exhibition at Chinese arts centre, Manchester
Chen Man solo exhibition at Chinese arts centre, Manchester
The work of Chinese female photographer Chen Man will be on show at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester (10 February – 7 April 2012).
Born in the 1980, Chen Man grew up in Beijing and studied at the Central Academy of Fine Art. Before graduation in 2005, she began her career as a fashion photographer by photographing the front cover of the popular lifestyle magazine Vision. Since then, she has created a rich body of striking images for Chinese editions of Elle, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. She has also won advertising commissions for international brands such as Adidas, Nike and Motorola.
Chen Man's images play with the juxtaposition of old and new, real and imaginary, ordinary and ideal. She frequently uses modern city landscapes and historical buildings in China as the backdrop for her images and mixes it with street culture, animation, sci-fi and pop references.
Chen Man's images are often heavily manipulated and involve painstaking and complex layers of post-production. The hyper-real aesthetic of her images alludes to a desire for unobtainable perfection.
Chen Man's rise coincides with emergence of a consumer culture in China and the desire for luxury consumer goods. The power and poignancy of her work lies in her ability to understand people's desires and to visualise them through her striking images. A role model for the post-80s generation, her images capture the personalities and attitudes of a new generation of Chinese.
This will be Chen Man's first UK solo exhibition.
Chinese Arts Centre, Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1EU.
