Policemen

As one of China's best recognised young painters, Li Songsong, who was born in 1973, has quickly built an international reputation through his sophisticated combination of sensuous painterly techniques and appropriated historical and political mass-media images. Like fellow painter Yin Zhaoyang, Li came of age in the post-Cultural Revolution era of reform, rapid modernisation and globalisation. Li's generation knows of the Cultural Revolution and the tumultuous 20th century, which forged the artistic identities of older generations of artists, mainly through mediated representations rather than through personal experience. Working from found images, Li takes an analytical approach to history, addressing the continuing resonance of the spectacle of China's 20th century through his painterly investigation of its imagery. Li deliberately blurs the line between mark-making and figuration, subtly critiquing the artifice of political spectacle and power.