Introduction

Tang Maohong simultaneously references and undermines art history and popular culture. He has integrated a variety of visual elements and subject matters, producing works that inhabit the ever-blurred border between elegant art and popular illustration. His work is absurd, magical, humorous and confrontational, hinting that the juxtapositions of figurative objects might be more than just illusions. Tang Maohong's pictorial universe reflects not only a new subject – a psyche whose internal eclectic imagination is echoed in the environment of constantly flowing images - but also the inversion of out-grown traditions.

"Faced with various contemporary economic and political issues, I can't avoid and thus respond by making some restrained narratives in the form of illustrations. Presenting the plot that is both real and false is not to explore the truth, but to temporarily cut off rational thinking, so that human desires can be revealed in another fictional situation."—Tang Maohong


Tang Maohong was born in 1975, now works and lives in Seoul, Korea. Recent exhibitions include: Sugar and Salt, SOOLSOOL Center, Soul, Korea (2021); Dual Solo Exhibition of He Wei & Tang Maohong, ShanghART Beijing (2019); Tang Maohong Solo Exhibition: Noa Noa, Southeast Asia Residency Exhibition, ShanghART Singapore (2019); Self-Cultivation: Nowadays Strategy, China · South Korea Artists Exhibition, Gwangju museum of Art, South Korea (2018); Tang Maohong Solo Exhibition: Riverbed, ShanghART Beijing (2017); Video Art Project at Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, India (2014); Tang Maohong Solo Exhibition: Exclave Con, ShanghART Beijing (2013); Nomadic Report 2012, Arko Art Center, Seoul, Korea (2012); Huge Character, Cooperation Project by Sun Xun, Tang Maohong, Zhang Ding, ShanghART Beijing (2011); Trans Local Motion - 7th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Musuem (2008); Thermocline of Art, New Asian Waves, ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany (2007); JIFF - 8th Jeonju International Film Festival, Korea (2007); Tang Maohong Solo Exhibition: Orchid Finger, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2006); Tang Maohong Solo Exhibition: Sunday, Gwangju Art Museum, Korea (2006); Singapore Biennale 2006: Belief (2006); A Lot of Ash - A Lot of Dust, BizArt, Shanghai (2005); Asian Traffic Shanghai: Magnetism - Suspension, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2005).