(Avants) Hong Kong, China, April 4, 2008 — In his latest work titled Monkey King, Chinese contemporary artist Lee Shi-min has lampooned the celebrity sex scandal, involving leaks onto the internet of sexually explicit photos involving Hong Kong singer-actor Edison Chen and a number of Hong Kong movie and music industry starlets, which broke out shortly before the start of this year’s Chinese Lunar New Year holidays.
Coincidentally, in the wake of the more recent scandal in March 2008 in the United States involving former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s link to Emperor’s Club VIP call girl Ashley Alexandra Dupre, alias Kristen, and his subsequent resignation, the central figure of the large-format work (1.32 by 1.80 m oil on canvas painting) from the artist’s Year of the Monkey series, is a camera-bearing, beret-wearing emperor-monkey king presumably a personification of Edison Chen, as the animal corresponds to the one of the Chinese zodiac year 1980 in which the entertainer was born.
The flesh-colored backdrop features a floral motif of ninety-nine petal-less rose-pair cuttings, and the breast-cap beret a cross, both employing designs similar to tattoos found on the body of one of the female parties to the scandal. The former likely symbolizes women while the latter suggests martyrdom (for lustful sins). The mustard yellow monkey fur may allude to Chinese imperial times when emperors commonly had multiple wives and concubines. The figure’s face, ears, arms, hands and feet are marked scarlet red, a main symbolic facial color in Chinese opera of the monkey king character Sun Wukong of the classical Chinese epic novel Journey to the West ascribed to the Ming dynasty scholar Wu Cheng’en. His eyes have no pupils — perhaps blinded by lust or the awesome beauty of the sights he has seen. His all important ruyi jingu bang or staff, an instrument of war, seems to have been replaced by an ” icon” camera snugly nestled between his legs and pointing towards the viewer. One bee is pointing vertically upwards on the red lens of the camera, while four small flies and nine identical butterflies, the last, possible representations of monkey king transformations, swirl around the figure. Six blood-colored drops emanate from the ends of rose-thorns pricking the monkey’s skin. Ironically, the painting’s prevalent reference to the number 9, which represents the most auspicious Chinese imperial number, matches Spitzer’s prostitution ring client reference number. The seemingly decorative painting, upon closer inspection, may be rich in symbolism.
In the Middle Kingdom of today’s modern-day digital age, all is not well on the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers as Edison Chen’s adventures in the south have transcended Sun Wukong’s Journey to the West where the only sutra the i-Generation is interested in is the Kama Sutra.
“Appropriately, in the momentous year of 2008 when China takes centre-stage in the sports arena as it prepares to host its inaugural Olympic Games, the painting is historically significant and important as it draws upon Eastern animist, Western religious and secular imagery to mark a milestone of maturity, development and coming of age in a nation traditionally conservative in sexual mores,” said Avants spokesman Will Bream.
Image credit line: Avants Photo
Contact:
Avants ( Hong Kong)
E-mail: art@avants.org
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