Jiao Xingtao (Chinese, 1970)

Born in 1970 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, Jiao Xingtao takes familiar everyday items such as discarded packing boxes, an empty milk carton, toothpaste boxes, a rolled-up Wrigley’s chewing gum wrapper or plastic bags from department stores, and using fibre glass transform them into meticulously crafted aesthetic objects.

These works at once thrill, amuse and shock the viewer as not only does Jiao Xingtao recreate the objects with hyper-realistic attention to detail, he also plays with scale to produce the most amazing visual effects. In Jiao Xingtao’s work, small insignificant objects suddenly assume grand proportions. An old cardboard packing box, crushed at the corners, is enlarged to become a formal, monumental sculpture. One is reminded of Rauschenberg’s cardboard boxes of the 1970s, and of his determination to “work in that gap between art and life”. In the same way, Jiao Xingtao questions the distinction between art object and everyday objects, portraying boxes with marks and worn labels that reveal their history and create a patina of wear and age.