By: Jing Li 

The 2023 Spectrum Miami Art Fair is famous for its urban and high-end artworks. It attracts more than 50,000 visitors and high-net-worth collectors, providing an opportunity for well-known and emerging independent artists to show their works internationally.

The Spectrum Miami Art Fair was held concurrently in Mana Wynwood, Miami’s bustling arts center, with Red Dot Miami. During the exhibition, Miami International Art Week, Art Basel, Miami has been held, and the exhibition has attracted thousands of collectors and artists from around the world gathered here. On the basis of artistry and academics, with the purpose of promoting the development of contemporary art, the exhibition honors outstanding artists with extensive influence, academic thought, independent spirit and artistic creativity in the international art circle. 

Schiavo Felice of Mr. Sun Chao, a renowned conceptual photography art planner in New York recommended by the Italian Effetto Art Foundation, won the ”Master of Art Award” among 280 galleries and more than 1,000 artworks.

Mr. Sun Chao, a conceptual photography art planner living and working in New York, is a leader in the field of contemporary Chinese art and a promoter of modern conceptual photography art. He has played a decisive role in breaking through the international dilemma of Chinese modern art. With the artistic context of the concept of freedom and profound philosophical ideas, he made the world see modern Chinese art in the way of artistic image works and made Chinese art revive in modern form and become the focus of the international art circle.

He said, ”Modern art is a new round of redefinition of the concept of art. For us, it is a position, a cultural attitude, and a posture that includes the reconstruction of the value system. That is to say, no matter what kind of artistic creation you are engaged in, as an artist, you should pay attention to the spiritual and psychological state of contemporary people and pay attention to the humanistic spirit of art as the most basic survival feeling of human beings.” A series of conceptual photography artworks directed and planned by him are created by following this kind of thinking, life and death, human relations and social problems, and the contradiction between living conditions.

From Mr. Sun Chao’s series of works, we can see his unique and novel artistic consciousness. In his award-winning work Schiavo Felice, the viewer is shown that human beings live and walk in a boundaryless cage, like a mummy with a price tag. They are like walking corpses, eyes scattered, confused and lost; they stand stagnantly and gloomily; everyone is surrounded by money and tied together by visible and invisible shackles.

The visual impact of the images is so striking that the work unfolds from a shallow to a deeper symbolism. From the surface level: under the current social situation, everyone is more or less under different pressures from various aspects, such as society, work, life, interpersonal relationships, family ties and so on. Under these pressures, people are struggling to move forward and live with money and material desires; people who are overburdened with these pressures become numb, rigid tools and machines. In this state, people feel tasteless, have no hope of seeing the future, and have no faith. It allows us to think further through the visual representation of the work and deeply understand the higher, broader and deeper philosophical meaning of the artist Sun Chao’s works: people are blinded by this materialistic world and unconsciously hypnotized by powerful public opinion. 

Although humans have evolved over millions of years, their spirituality has not fundamentally changed, and the ultimate question has not yet been solved: why are people born, why am I, and why are we always lonely, empty, and fearful of the future? These seemingly personal inner conflicts are actually conflicts shared by human beings. From a spiritual perspective, only when people discover their own hearts can they discover the whole world. This is the core of human beings and is valuable.

Only in this way can people transcend those secular problems and free themselves from the most primitive contradictions. This is the value of artist Sun Chao’s works of art! In the simple and easy-to-understand concept, it extends and contains the embodiment of profound philosophical theory. Just as Richard Wearn, a tenured professor at the Art College of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a world-famous heavyweight authoritative art critic and artist, commented when he saw Mr. Sun Chao’s works at the exhibition, Mr. Sun Chao has achieved an extraordinary shock to the soul from a minimalist visual language.

Photo Credit: Sun Chao

Mr. Sun Chao has never followed the mainstream of contemporary art and is a maverick, which benefits from his unique life experience. His works are like a sharp sword, opening a bloody wound and reaching the viewer’s heart. At the same time, his works are also mixed with the impulse of desire, subverting the tradition in the form of expression and challenging the traditional standards of the art circle with controversial extreme creation. He continues to reveal his sensitivity to his works and his thinking on the language form of new art, which is why we are fortunate to see excellent contemporary art today because a group of pioneer artists such as Mr. Sun Chao has made such works, which is the contribution of Mr. Sun Chao’s works to the field of contemporary art.

The difference between Mr. Sun Chao and others is that he has the power to make his own life outstanding and create unique works with independent and free thoughts and traditional forces. His works have the power to shape a kind of extraordinary power, and he uses this power to enter another category of art field. It is also Mr. Sun Chao, such a powerful and pioneering artist, that makes China’s contemporary art from the edge to the mainstream, and it is respected by the international art circle as never before.

Introduction to Mr. Sun Chao:

Born in 1995, Sun Chao is an emerging Chinese conceptual video director and planner living and working in New York, USA, and Wuxi, China. He has been actively engaged in capturing socially relevant video content. His series of short films, including Schiavo Felice, FARMERS AND TURKEYS, have won awards in France, Italy, the United States, Germany, Japan, Singapore and other countries.

Published by: Martin De Juan