Miao Xiaochun：Save As

Curator: Wang Chunchen

Present by: Sun Yongzeng

Exhibition Director: Liu Chenya, Cao Maochao

Exhibition Coordinator: Shen Feifei

Organized by: WhiteBox Art Center

WhiteBox Art Center  March 12,2015－April 20,2015

WhiteBox Art center is proud to announce the opening of Miao Xiaochun’s solo exhibition“Save As”on March 12^th,2015. It is His second solo exhibition after the “Out of Body” in 2011 at WhiteBox Art center. Unlike his last video works, this exhibition will display the latest five years (2010-2015) painting works. It’s the first show for these artworks. The exhibition will continue until April 20^th, 2015.

Miao Xiaochun was so addicted to the form of transformation in digital software and digital technology, then he developed it into painting. The curator Wang Chunchen defines it as “Algorithmic Paintings”. It is a result of combination of the digital and the manual work. He used a cutting plotter to carve the vector file created with 3D software, then transported it into canvas to assist the manual painting. Evidently, such assistance plays an important role in the formation of the final painting style. It can be considered as a new form of painting, which is a significant revolution of painting since the development of digital technology. In this form, it is not only regarding the liberation and breakthrough of painting's self-composition, more important point is this form combines with human brain and computer calculation together, and achieves human-computer interaction and binding. Philosophy, this success opens the era of man-machine cooperation. From the perspective of painting, it doubles the painting way infinitely. From the perspective of vision, it makes visible our invisible world.

Miao Xiaochun has been well known as a photographic artist and digital video artist in these years, but in fact, his earliest works were paintings. In 1990s, Miao Xiaochun went to Germany to study moving images, then he focused more on this media for creations, and has made great achievements and recognition at home and abroad in the past 20 years. About painting, Miao Xiaochun never forgot about it, and he found his method for painting to integrate into his moving images. His painting training in earlier years is very useful for his creation of digital art, which as different art forms are complementary and reference to each other. Miao Xiaochun’s “Algorithmic Paintings” is the spark of a combination between paint and computer technology. It is believed that this will open up a new way to the creation of art.

These years, Miao Xiaochun has been working every day with computer and software, he hold two paradoxical feelings towards technology, which helps him a lot, while it also makes him depend on it. These feelings drive him to create the Public Enemy. This exhibition will present this piece of huge artwork, and welcome to WhiteBox Art center, appreciating the new vision of art from Miao Xiaochun’s paintings.

Save As: On Miao Xiaochun’s Algorithmic Painting Wang

Miao Xiaochun has been well known as a photographic artist and digital video artist in these years, but in fact, his earliest works were paintings. His first solo exhibition in 1980s was a painting show in the old address of Central Academy of Fine Art in the downtown of Beijing, and Mr. Shao Dazhen, a famous art critic, wrote an exhibition text for it. At that time, very few master degree graduates could hold a solo exhibition, so Miao's first solo exhibition was significant. In 1990s, Miao Xiaochun went to Germany to study moving images, then he focused more on this media for creations, and has made great achievements and recognition at home and abroad in

the past 20 years.

About painting, Miao Xiaochun never forgot about it, and he found his method for painting to integrate into his moving images: the history of painting and its composition merge in to the composition of his photography and the visual elements of digital videos. His painting training in earlier years is very useful for his creation of digital art, which as different art forms are complementary and reference to each other, it might be one of the artistic nature of this era. However, it is beyond the artist's expectation when he found the new possibility of painting during the process of digital art creation.

Miao Xiaochun was so addicted to the form of transformation in digital software and digital technology, then he developed it into painting and created Algorithmic Paintings. It is a result of combination of the digital and the manual work. He used a cutting plotter to carve the vector file created with 3D softwares, then transported it onto canvas to assist the manual painting. Evidently, such an assistance plays an important role in the formation of the final painting style. It can be considered as a new form of painting, which is a significant revolution of painting since the development of digital technology. In this form, it is not only regarding the liberation

and breakthrough of painting's self-composition, more important point is this form combines with human brain and computer calculation together, and achieves human-computer interaction and binding. It has been the dream of people since ancient times: how to get people thinking leap, how to get support from other than mankind. Human beings dreamed for this ability to achieve breakthroughs in all aspects in all the time in the history of scientific inventions; from astronomy to geography, from macro to micro. It has been to emphasize that autonomy, self and transcendence of human in art, into its modern history, the basic element of art is human's imagine and creation, and more people seek to the independence and uniqueness of the art because of the development and invention of machines. Art seems to be recognized as a creation only dominated by artist, not subject to any external forces, factors or technologies.

Miao had this idea clearly in his mind, and he knew the purely digital technology cannot be art, it must implement many of the conversion, but also he had to cover a variety of barriers. He was well aware of the difficulty of digital technology and its potential to express art, so he spent lots of time on researching digital images' performance space and possibility, and finally proved it throughout his practice. As the same time, he also found the drawing possibility of digital technology, such as, its super calculation is more powerful than any human brains, and its images are pretty cool through it cannot paint by itself. Miao Xiaochun is a pioneer of explorer

in this new revolution, and the technology's potential of art expression is not explored at all. For instance, the invention of photography promoted the development of photographic art and revolution of painting. Nowadays, the revolution is not only regarding painting itself, leading the digital technology as part of painting should be the new significant of revolution.

By operating digital process, Miao's art cell divides dramatically in the virtual world and evolves into all kinds of images, modeling and stories of art. Existing in three-dimension world, these visual objects created by operation contain all the artist's operational thoughts and embody each inspiration. With the close cooperation of human brain and computer, not the rejection and separation, artists can willfully express their intention. Such breakthrough attributes to the birth of the supercomputer. Consequently, Miao applies the gradually mature computer operation into his creation and succeeded transforming the images in the virtual space to the visual real space, so these pictures presented on canvas at last and brought us different visual effect and appearance. Philosophy, this success opens the era of man-machine cooperation. From the perspective of painting, it doubles the painting way infinitely. From the perspective of vision, it makes us visible to our sightless world.

 "Algorithmic painting" is from the same strain of Miao's artistic creation, and it is developed to some extent. Increasing number of artists begin to use algorithm to create, which expand the function of algorithm vastly. For example, for abstract painting, after inputting multiple data, different kinds of abstract type can be conceived at random; or after inputting water ink elements and different drawing styles of writing, unexpected water ink composition will be created. International chess masters have been gaming with computers for years, and now, 3D print can be regarded as the application of the computer algorithm in the 3D production. So far,

algorithmic painting is just a beginning, and Miao expands his art thought to form a chain of his art. It is predictable that he will continue to use the algorithm and 3D print to create the final works which can be called 3D printing sculpture.

Certainly, the premise of all the man-machine integration is still the human brain. It is the autonomy of people that plays a decisive role. Like playing the international chess with the computer, computer's ability is always fade next to people wisdom. Similarly, the premise of algorithmic painting is artist's painting ideas and thoughts. It cannot draw automatically, but it can be an important part of artist's painting languages and tools.

Nowadays, the art is totally global. The principle and conception of art are also global

sharing. Each artist should try to contribute to the development of globalization, and more openness will be better for the future, accordingly, for the formation of the inter-permeated art. No matter which country or individual, practitioners ahead of the curve are always needed to test a new technology, create a brand-new art language, prove a novel concept and present a distinctive attitude. Miao's algorithmic painting demonstrates once again that the milestone significant development and progress of art in history can hardly do without the discovery of new technology, like the fact that the discovery of the perspective greatly stimulates the Renaissance painting. Like this, the advent of digital technology makes Miao's algorithmic painting come into being, so, there are good reasons to believe that algorithmic painting's brilliant future is just beginning.

2 Feburary 2015

Tate, London