Artwork Description

Title: Play Dream Life
Artist: Mao Tongqiang
Date: 2000
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 63.0 x 51.2 in (160 x 130 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
Play Dream Life is a striking oil on canvas by contemporary Chinese artist Mao Tongqiang. The work presents a surreal and stylized female portrait with dreamlike ambiguity. The face, rendered in soft monochrome, contrasts sharply with the figure’s vibrant, emerald-toned hair that billows into the ether, creating an atmospheric tension between clarity and abstraction.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Mao Tongqiang’s work reflects a conceptual and post-pop sensibility often associated with the rise of Chinese contemporary art in the late 20th century. The smooth, airbrushed textures and theatrical contrast between color and grayscale are reminiscent of early 2000s Chinese photorealism and the Cynical Realism movement. At the same time, the surrealist fragmentation of the subject’s head—where the top portion appears incomplete or eroded—adds a psychological dimension, suggesting memory, identity, or cultural erasure.

3. Historical Context
Created in 2000, the painting emerges at a pivotal moment in China's cultural evolution, when artists were actively questioning narratives around identity, consumerism, and the changing visual culture of a rapidly globalizing nation. The Title: Play Dream Life implies a performative tension between reality and aspiration, capturing the surreal interplay of personal fantasy and societal expectation, a key concern for artists of Mao Tongqiang’s generation.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The painting is in very good condition. The canvas is structurally sound, and both surface and pigment remain vibrant and stable. No visible restoration or conservation issues are present.

6. Artistic Significance
This work stands as an evocative example of Mao Tongqiang’s ability to bridge aesthetic experimentation with cultural critique. Through the fusion of photographic realism and conceptual abstraction, Play Dream Life invites viewers into a suspended state between presence and disappearance. It is an important piece for collectors interested in early 21st-century Chinese contemporary art that engages both psychological depth and visual innovation.