PROJECTS > Making Mona Lisa

Painter #11 (Jian Hua)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
30" X 45"
2013
Painter #3 (Zhong Haibo)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
54" X 36"
2010
Painter #4 (Cai Yongsheng)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
54" X 36"
2010
Painter #9 (Wang Wei)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
30" X 45"
2013
Painter #10 (Student)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
45" X 30"
2013
Painter #5 (Huang Wenlong)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
36" X 54"
2010
Painter #12 (Lin Sen)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
30" X 45"
2013
Painter #13 (Jian Hua Sun)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
30" X 45"
2013
Painter #1 (Pan Jin)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
36" X 54"
2010
Painter #6  (Wang Yizhang)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
36" X 54"
2010
Painter #2 (Mr. Lin)
Oil Paint over Inkjet Print on Canvas
54" X 36"
2010
Still Life #5
Archival Pigment Print
18" X 27"
2010
Still Life #7
Archival Pigment Print
27" X 18"
2010
Still Life #1
Archival Pigment Print
18" X 27"
2010
Still Life #3
Archival Pigment Print
18" X 27"
2010
Still Life #4
Archival Pigment Print
27" X 18"
2010
Still Life #6
Archival Pigment Print
18” x 27”
2013

Making Mona Lisa addresses the cultural convergence of Western ideas about the value of art and the mass production of Chinese oil paintings that reproduce the work of, or mimic the style of, European masters and render snapshots emailed as digital files. Rather than printing my photographic portraits of the painters to photo paper, I commissioned oil paintings so that the painter replaces the printer. This mode of production calls into question the use of the artist as manual laborer, as well as the value and authorship of the “original” and copied artworks, by creating a complex, many-layered image.

Contrastingly, the still life photographic prints of the painters’ live/work spaces include imagery of paintings and/or painting tools so the materiality of the industry becomes the subject of the still life.