The first public presentation of the celebrated Chinese media artist Miao Xiaochun’s 360 degree 3D immersive projection of Chinese contemporary art will be presented at the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre (CMC), City University of Hong Kong (CityU).

Microcosm, a remake of Miao’s same-titled work created in 2008, is being developed using AVIE (Advanced Visualization and Interaction Environment), a unique 360-degree immersive 3D projection environment at CityU, for the first time. In this new intense 3D version, Miao sets his audience in a world surrounded by his recreation of Hieronymus Bosch's late 15th century masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights. It is an imaginative reinvention of the painting’s sumptuous landscape of sin and salvation using new digital means and computer technologies that conjure a contemporary visual vocabulary. He abolishes the traditional fixed single-point perspective aesthetic in favour of the Chinese tradition of multiple points of view, which he constructs into a world of radically different metaphors and tangled relations.

Miao is one of the most representative and influential of China’s new media artists. He graduated with master’s degrees from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1989 and Kassel Academy of Fine Arts in Germany in 1999. Miao has shown his work internationally at numerous landmark exhibitions for contemporary Chinese art including Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China at Haus der Kultur der Welt in Berlin; the 2005 Guangzhou International Photo Biennale, City of Dreams at the Red Mansion Foundation in London; Sightseeing at SCA Galleries in Sydney; and The Last Judgement in Cyberspace at Walsh Gallery in Chicago. Currently, he is teaching photography and digital media at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.

Microcosm will be exhibited at Gallery 360, 8th floor of CMC from 28 April to 20 May 2012, Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 8pm. The exhibition is open to the public for free. There will be continuous admission during the screening while the film repeats on loop every 6 minutes 24 seconds. For more information, please visit http://cmc.scm.cityu.edu.hk/en/events/microcosm.html

Notes to editors:

Please download Microcosm’s photos at the following link:

http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/fionang/CityU_Microcosm_Photos.zip

Members of the press are welcome to interview the artist Miao Xiaochun during his visit to Hong Kong in mid-May. Please contact Fion Ng for further arrangements on or after 14 May.

Media enquiries: Christina Wu, Communications and Public Relations Office (Tel: 3442 6819 or 9841 2774) / Fion Ng, School of Creative Media (Tel: 3442 7659 or 9133 9599)