Arts | Mio Pang Fei on show at Venice

The opening ceremony of artist Mio Pang Fei’s Venice Biennale debut took place at the Macau–China Pavilion in the presence of VIP guests, including members of the Committee of Cultural Industries and a delegation of local artists. The Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau of Macau (IACM) chairman Alex Vong, the president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), Ung Vai Meng, and the featured artist Mio Pang Fei delivered speeches.
The ‘Path and Adventure’ is designed to convey narrative of a Chinese painter, who decided to embark on an adventure and explore the future of oriental painting during the Cultural Revolution. Destined to be tormented, physically and mentally, on his secret and devout quest and experiments, he confronted inner doubts and faced grave personal risk of demise in his artistic pursuits, which ran counter to the dominant Maoist ideology.
The featured 18 paintings and installations are exhibited in three sections: The Special Era, Shui Hu Series, and the Path of Neo-Orientalism. The exhibit showcases Mio Pang Fei’s experimentalist paintings from the Cultural Revolution, as well as his achievements from his decades-long research and practice of Neo-Orientalism; an artistic approach transcending national borders and embracing concepts of Western art to reconstruct an Eastern aesthetic.
In his speech, Alex Vong said, “Mio Pang Fei is a pioneer in Macau’s contemporary art scene.”
Ung Vai Meng commented: “Over a long period in the 20th century, Chinese artists were confronted with much more complex and harder adversities than their Western counterparts. Mio tried hard to explore Western modern painting – then criticized by the regime. However, he insisted on continuing his studies and experiments, and later opted to study the fusion of traditional Chinese art with modern Western painting schools.”
The exhibition is co-organised by IACM, the Macau Museum of Art and the IC. According to a press release, it presents “a unique artistic landscape of Macau characteristics” to a global audience.