Josep Soler i Casanellas
Mao Xuhui
Mao Xuhui (毛辉 Born in 1956 in Chongqing, Sichuan), the idealistic leader of the mid-1980s Southwest Art Group, which included Zhang Xiaogang and Pan Dehai, has never strayed far from Kunming and Gui Mountain in Yunnan province, the wellspring of his creativity. Mao Xuhui began to take "power" as a theme in 1989 with the Parents series of paintings. In 1992 he completed the Vocabulary of Power series. It was from the image of the "parent" that the "scissors" was developed. The "parent" is an iconic yet shapeless shadow seated on an overwhelming altar-like throne. It is aloof and awe-inspiring, like a religious icon. The stylized shape of the "parent" resembles a pair of scissors, and it gradually becomes one which, in the Scissors series, presides over domestic settings as the "parent" would sit upon the altar. The menacing presence of the scissors is compounded as an instrument of the everyday; as such it is a domestic as well as "democratic" symbol, carrying associated powers by being visually suggestive of the anthropomorphic god-like "parent" icon. It was not until 2011 that the auction of his early works its price rose sharply, placing it in the position he deserved in Chinese contemporary art.
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