Lot Essay
Chinese-born artist Ni Haifeng obtained his degree at the Zhejiang Art Academy (now the China Academy of Fine Arts) in Hangzhou in 1986, and has lived and worked in the Netherlands since 1994. Since the late 1980's the artist had produced installations in which he makes use of sculpture, painting, video and photography to create poetic ensembles, that slowly but surely entice the viewer into questions revolving around alienation, disengagement, reality and artificiality, and identity in a globalised world. In his work he questions and destabilizes the way in which our gaze is involuntarily controlled and subverted by the overwhelming amount of images, impressions, experiences, definitions and designs we are served up by the media and science, amongst others. The artist won the Fritschy-prijs in 2003. Numerous exhibitions include: The Return of the Shreds, Scheltema, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Leiden( 2007), Wherever We Go, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco (2007), Of the Arrival and the Departure, Het Museum Prinsenhof, Delft (2005), Out of Sight, de Appel, Amsterdam (2005), 5th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Art Museum, (2004), Multiple lies, GEM, museum of contemporary art, the Hague (2003).