FENG MENGBO (CHINA, B. 1966)

In 1992, Feng Mengbo began experimenting with video games formats. He uses traditional oil painting techniques to portray the flat screen and colour contrasting images from the rough texture games screen of the eighties (8 dip) production, bringing the virtual race to our physical world. Insofar as fantasy is an effect of representation; both of these elements are based on the dialectic of presence and absence.


In Streetfighter II (Lot 148), two characters are fighting on a horizontal Street Fighter screen in a 1987 arcade fighting game. Wang is a character from the Revolutionary Model Opera popularised during the Cultural Revolution being manipulated into the video game; while Guile is the original character from Street Fighter as a major in the United States Air Force. Feng Mengbo tries to make his character a revolutionary hero by making him win. By bringing together classic images from two very different periods of contemporary cultural history, Feng creates a superficially playful yet disquieting effect of Political Pop. Here, there are only order and procedures, but no political standard, no code of conduct. The work reveals the artist’s sense that in contemporary culture, the ultimate reality lies in games.