The Chambers project SPARK! is Yan Lei and Hong Hao’s third collaboration, the most notorious being the 1997 fake invitations addressed to Chinese artists purportedly to invite them to participate in a ‘special section’ of the prestigious Documenta X exhibition in Kassel.
The starting point for the Chambers exhibition was the launch of a new Beijing-based arts, music and design magazine SPARK!. The magazine publishers engaged Hong Hao as Art Editor due to his reputation for works based on printing processes, the creation of artist’s books as well as his compelling manipulation of the dynamics of information and misinformation. Hong Hao was assisted in this task by activist painter Yan Lei who himself often works with images drawn from popular culture. Under their joint control SPARK! Issue I immediately launched an open process of dialogue with an invitation to a diverse range of people to propose their own definitions – in images or in text – of what constitutes art.
Edition of 28
Includes 4 digital prints, 3 C-prints on xuan paper,
2 collages, 1 Spark magazine and 1 Spark exhibition catalogue
Aluminum box set, Beijing 2009
$1,800 + shipping