BEIJING 2007/2008

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I had been in Paris, Milan, London.

Drag Queen, Family, and Deejay series behind me.

Then I met Fabien Fryns.

Belgian gallerist. Gallery in Beijing.

2007. He asked me to move to China for a year.

Create work from the experience.

Prepare a big show in 2008, Olympics year.

I went.

Digital drawing got more complex, more precise.

Photo retouching turned into freehand drawing.

Gradually, photography disappeared.

Drawings became mysterious.

Hyper-realistic, but not photographs.

Lines too sharp, too precise.

This fit my interests.

Led me toward the post-human.

The 2008 F2 Gallery show: portraits talking to each other.

Cinema icons, fashion figures, fairy-tale characters, dolls.

Faces deformed, obvious.

Photography was gone from the process.

Works made like photographs.

Printed on photographic paper, Lambda prints.

Two works were huge.

300 x 170 cm. Almost record-breaking.

Hard to imagine making them today.

Paris Hilton.

The Princess and the Pea.

Queen Elizabeth II.

Alice in Wonderland.

First period in China: different environment, different climate.

Economic boom. Enthusiasm. Ferment.

Never found that energy anywhere else.

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