Sun Yuan & Peng Yu

Sun Yuan (born 1972) and Peng Yu (born 1974) are artists living and working collaboratively in Beijing ever since the late 90's.

Sun was born in Beijing and Peng in Heilongjiang. Sun and Peng are contemporary conceptual artists whose work has a reputation for being confrontational and provocative. They won the Contemporary Chinese Art Award in 2001.

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are famous for working with unconventional media such as taxidermy, human fat, and machinery. In "Dogs Which Cannot Touch Each Other", four dogs (two pairs facing one another) were strapped onto treadmills in a public installation.

In their contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale, the duo invited Chinese farmer Du Wenda to present his home-made UFO at the Chinese Pavilion.

The installation "Old People's Home," (2008) comprised 13 hyperrealist sculptures of elderly world leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Leonid Brezhnev, in electric wheelchairs set to automatically wander through the room and bump into one another.

"Angel", created in 2008 and exhibited frequently since then, is a fiberglass angel sculpture complete with flesh-covered wings, white hair, and frighteningly realistic skin that features details like wrinkles, sunspots, and peach fuzz.

Their 2009 solo exhibition, "Freedom", at Tang Contemporary in Beijing, featured a large fire-hose hooked to a chain that erupted water spray at a distance of 120 meters and thrashed throughout an enormous metal cage. It was interpreted by some as a memorial to the Tiananmen Square incident on its twentieth anniversary.

Tales of Our Time, Guggenheim Museum, NY

2009

Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

2006

Liverpool Biennial, Tang Contemporary Art, Liverpool, UK

2005

Higher, F2 Gallery, Beijing, China (solo)

Venice Biennale

Mahjong: Chinese Contemporary Art from Uli Sigg Collection, Art Museum Bern, Switzerland

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