Miao Xiaochun

Miao Xiaochun was born in 1964 in Wuxi, China. He is currently a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, living and working in Beijing.

In the 1990s, Miao began his creative explorations into the interface between the real and the virtual. His extensive oeuvre includes parallel works of photography, painting, and 3D computer animation. With A Visitor from the Past and New Urban Reality series, he examined contemporary photography based on multiple viewpoints, thereby pioneering connections between history and the modern world. In his important 3D series The Last Judgment in Cyberspace, Microcosm, and Restart, he uses 3D technology to create a virtual 3D scene upon a 2D image, transforming a still canvas into moving images. Thus, he changes the traditional way of viewing paintings and gives a completely new interpretation and significance to a masterpiece of art, especially with his visualizations of history and the future. His works are an important example of contemporary negotiations with art history. With his constant exploration of multiple possibilities of new technology, he has developed a series of Algorithmic Paintings since 2009, which were exhibited together with his new 3D computer animations in the Chinese Pavilion during the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Miao Xiaochun has participated in many international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, the Kiev International Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Guangzhou Triennial, the Chengdu Biennale, the Guangzhou Photo Biennial, the Seoul International Media Art Biennale, and the Shanghai Biennale.

Miao’s work has also been collected by MoMA New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smart Museum of Art, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, the Fondation Nationale d’Art Contemporain (FNAC), the Singapore Art Museum, and the Shanghai Art Museum.