Sun Yitian Jingpin, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
186,2 x 186,2 x 9 cm (framed)
The painting places a designer shoe from the 1950s marked “Jingpin” (in the past connoting quality but subsequently meaning fake or imitation) in an African landscape of breadfruit trees. An iconic design object by the French avant-garde shoe designer André Perugia (1893-1977), the shoe, produced in 1955, was itself designed in reference to a series of still-lives, Black Fish, the French artist George Braque painted in the 1940s.
The artist replaced the trademark of the fish shoes in the picture with the Chinese word “Jingpin” (meaning “quality and exquisite products”) but explained that in China, only fake goods or goods of poor quality are deliberately marked with the words “Jingpin.” In effect, the word, by claiming authenticity precisely denies it. The word "Jingpin" has become a pejorative by association with mass production, yet in a contemporary twist, it has been recently re-appropriated by a new, younger wave of consumers.
The far-reaching repercussions of China's wealth for the global economy is alluded to by the setting: a landscape that, with its subtly exotic flora, connotes foreignness.
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