Until a year ago, Miao Xiaochun had a dilemma. He wanted to create digital images in his next art project, but lacked inspiration. Then he came across a photo-graph of The Last Judgement, Michelangelo's enormous fresco completed in 1541 that covers the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The dazzling work, with Christ floating in the centre surrounded by hundreds of angels and devils, captures the moment before the final judgment of eternal damnation or heavenly ascent. 'When I saw Michelangelo's picture, I saw two small doors at the bottom,' says 42-year-old Miao. 'I thought, 'What would happen if you went through and saw this fresco from the back?'' Suitably inspired, the Beijing-based artist recreated the composition, with each of the 400-odd figures being a computer-generated, three-dimensional figure based on himself. In his virtual world, Miao was able to look at the masterpiece from different angles and perspectives. Working with three assistants for a year, Miao used photographs of himself to construct a grey, hairless three-dimensional figure. Calculating the exact position of each figure in fresco, Miao replicated them so they could be viewed from the back, side, top and bottom. In the original, the naked figures are partially covered in flowing red, blue and green drapery. The sky is blue and the ground is blanketed with a green grass. In Miao's monochrome work, everything is done in shades of grey. Creating hundreds of bodies using 3-D software is more difficult than making a few, but Miao says the work had to be full of people. 'I didn't want to choose a simple picture with only one or two people,' Miao says. 'It wouldn't be very interesting or require much imagination. I like many people in my work - just like cities in China.' The Last Judgement in Cyberspace occupies three rooms of Osage Contemporary Art Space, and comprises mainly high-definition photographs of figures looking towards Christ. Clusters of bodies hover on clouds, while others are immersed in water, struggling to stay afloat. The floor of the main room is covered with a 12x14-metre photograph (the same size as the original), showing the frontal view. 'For the first time, I can get a sense of the relationships between the different figures,' says Osage Gallery consultant Jonathan Thomson. 'Miao's work has brought the original into life so much more.' Miao says Michelangelo's work was just the starting point. 'I needed to use my imagination to take it further, make it engaging,' he says. 'When you see the image from the back, it may not be very interesting, so I had to create additional elements.' In some of the photos, he added extra figures that in the original are hidden behind a boat or hill. Miao, who has never been to the Sistine Chapel, says the original religious painting questions humanity's destiny after death. 'It's about where will we go,' he says. He uses this concept to fuel a seven-minute video. The same body in his photos populates the video. The camera zooms in and out of the scene, as bodies float in space. Figures gently fall, then are scooped back upward. Through-out the video, a voice asks: 'Where will you go?' - and answers: 'You will go there.' Miao creates art that challenges his imagination and changes traditional work into something modern. 'I changed a painting to a [virtual] sculpture, from 2-D to 3-D, from different people to one person and from colour to black-and-white,' he says. A graduate of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Kunsthochschule Kassel in Germany, he says his background in traditional Chinese arts has crept into this work. The clouds in the photos, for instance, break up the composition of the piece - as they often do in Chinese landscape paintings. 'In my work, I use a contemporary medium to make my work look like traditional Chinese art,' he says. 'It's not the medium, ink or paper that's important, but the spirit.' Miao says he regards art as a bridge between him and other people, and between the past and future. 'Unlike animals, who only leave behind bones, we humans are lucky because we can leave a part of our spirit for other people in the future,' he says. And what would Michelangelo have made of The Last Judgement in Cyberspace? 'Michelangelo would have never thought a person from China would change his painting like this.' Image + Imagination, Mon- Sat, 10am-7pm, Osage Contemporary Art Space, 4/F Union Hing Yip Industrial Building, 2 Hing Yip Street, Kwun Tong. Ends Oct 31
