Miao Xiaochun, The Last Judgment in Cyberspace, Front view, Detail.

Museum
of Contemporary Religious Art
221 North Grand Boulevard
314-977-7170
St. Louis
Miao Xiaochun,
The Last Judgment in Cyberspace
February 3-May 11, 2008

What do the figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment ... see at this fatal moment? To Miao Xiaochun, to answer these questions means to enter the painting and to assume the varied gazes of the painted figures.

— Wu Hung, art historian and exhibition curator

Chinese artist Miao Xiaochun asked himself an interesting question: "How would Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment appear from behind?" To explore this premise, Miao Xiaochun rendered a 3-D digital model of his own body. Then he mapped this model onto all 400-plus of the figures in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting, creating a virtual space according to the composition of the painting. From this virtual space he produced several large-scale digital images of the scene from various vantage points, as well as a video in which the viewer "flies through" the painting.

The artist describes it as "a visual and intellectual recreation of a different order — a two-dimensional representation is translated into a three-dimensional representation, a standard religious theme becomes the subject of personal speculation, a conclusion is turned into a question, a still canvas is made into active images, and an ancient work is taken as the site of a contemporary discourse."

Curator and art historian Wu Hung describes The Last Judgment in Cyberspace as a re-representation of an existing work of art. Contemporary digital and video technology allows contemporary artists to reflect upon and respond to earlier art forms, transforming paintings and sculptures into animated images with enhanced visual immediacy.

Miao Xiaochun’s approach enables the viewer to enter Michelangelo’s painting as a participant, and allows one to adopt otherwise impossible viewing angles. This allows for imaginative play: what is the experience of judgment from the point of view of one of the blessed, or one of the damned, or one of the heavenly cohort?

Furthermore, new critical perspectives are introduced, both of Michelangelo’s painting, and of the questions about ultimate meaning it raises. Miao Xiaochun becomes all of the characters—the divine, the demonic, the saved, and the damned. The repeated use of the same model "automatically abandons the distinctions between high and low, left and right, good and evil, honorable and humble, east and west, ancient and modern," according to the artist.

Miao Xiaochun leaves the figures in his "re-representation" in a relatively rough state, with an almost marble-like texture. The images and the video blend qualities of cutting-edge technology with sublime and apocalyptic imagery.

Miao Xiaochun was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China in 1964. He has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including shows in China, Korea, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Presently he teaches in the Photography and Digital Media Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Miao Xiaochun, The Last Judgment in Cyberspace, Front view, Detail.