Luo Brothers   (Chinese) 

The Luo Brothers are perhaps the finest example of an artistic movement that overtook the post-1989 Chinese art scene. Dubbed ‘gaudy’ or ‘kitsch’ art, the theory sprung from the pop culture bombardment China suffered in the last decade of the twentieth-century. Besieged with emblems of consumerism – in the form of MacDonalds, Coca-Cola, Motorola and a host of other Western manufacturers – this form of painting was a reaction to the capitalist consumerism Asians were suddenly faced with and a way of critiquing its negative influences on traditional Eastern culture. stic movement that overtook the post-1989 Chinese art scene. Dubbed ‘gaudy’ or ‘kitsch’ art, the theory sprung from the pop culture bombardment China suffered in the last decade of the twentieth-century. Besieged with emblems of consumerism – in the form of MacDonalds, Coca-Cola, Motorola and a host of other Western manufacturers – this form of painting was a reaction to the capitalist consumerism Asians were suddenly faced with and a way of critiquing its negative influences on traditional Eastern culture.

In the hands of the Luo Brothers – Luo Weidon, Luo Weiguo, and Luo Weibing (born 1962, 1964 and 1972 respectively), this influence was ironically recommoditized into both painting and sculpture that acutely caught the psychological and social implications of China’s transformation. In their trademark series, ‘The Worlds Most Famous Brand,’ the Luo brothers create a canvas -- on visual overload. Their template is the Chinese New Year poster – and its ubiquitous chubby-cheeked toddler, springing forth from a background of pink, yellow, and red rays, cradling the slogans and consumer goods of a Western consumer market. In the place of fireworks, flowers and other emblems traditional to the posters, the babies clutch cell phones, coke cans, and hamburgers. As one critic noted, ‘these emblems constitute only one element of the Luo Brothers’ carnivalesque fantasies, where distortions of scale, extravagant colour, and absurd juxtapositions of iconography class in both celebration and mourning of an anarchic utopia. The paintings could not convey more vividly the dizzying dislocation and anomic afflicting Chinese society today.

Their works are made doubly interesting by the mediums in which the brothers choose to work. Their sculptures, created in fibre glass --- create the deception of porcelain, while their paintings are finished using an ancient Easter lacquering technique --- coating the canvas with a mirror-like, glossy layer of homogenizing lacquer. Their pieces are expressly designed to be evocative of both worlds --- that of the old one and the new one – and in doing so, they highlight the need to remain open, yet critical, of the future and always mindful of the past that have gone before.