Gordon Cheung

I've been watching this artist for a while. Hong Kong-born and London-based Gordon Cheung is the Dali of today. Surreal landscapes of reality and hallucinations executed with Chinese ink, spray paint and oil, Gordon has been gaining exposure since his graduation from the Royal College of Art in 2001.

The piece pictured above just won the Laing Art Gallery's competition for emerging artists, Laing Solo. He used pages of the Financial Times to create virtual landscapes. Inspired by 19th century Romantic artist John Martin, Cheung explained: "I felt I could re-translate John Martin's Paradise Lost series into a contemporary and relevant context. The idea that we are losing, or certainly becoming increasingly urgent with, our relationship to Earth is compelling and to use an archetypal story as a means of understanding our era attracted me a great deal.”

28 Jul - 4 Oct 2007
Laing Art Gallery

See: Gordon Cheung's website