Paint to order

IN HIS LATEST work, Feng Mengbo leaves behind the video games and interactive-technology installations that made him famous. The mainland new media artist says this move to a more classical style of painting with a technological twist, partly reflects commercial considerations.

'When I was young, art and the art market did not mix,' Feng says. 'Equating the two was sacrilege, but things have changed. I'm not so young any more. I've done non-commercial work for many years and now I've changed my ideas.'

The artist says he used to be independent, and never thought about money. 'Now I want to play the [art] market game,' Feng says. 'Actually, money gives you freedom sometimes.'

So, he devised his latest exhibition, 'Built to Order: r_drawworld 0', now showing at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. He says it's a reflection on the state of the contemporary art world, in which artists are consciously or unconsciously engaged in creating made-to-order products for collectors.

'Whether they admit it or not, the entire art circle is involved in this implicit conspiracy,' Feng says. 'The shameless posturing of rugged individuality and non-conformity is a myth, an attempt to deceive themselves and others, and artists are reduced to mere product labels. I'm on a mission to destroy this myth and my satirical model of the internet economy is a possible method of accomplishing this.'

In this new work, Feng has created dramatically surreal three-dimensional effect images of Mao Zedong. 'We found a detailed ceramic bust of him in a street market,' the artist says.