Beijing-based avant-garde photographer Chen Man takes on China’s modern issues with her unnaturally perfect imageries. By Edmund Lee

In June, Chen Man will turn 30. She is already a hugely sought after fashion photographer on the Mainland, and the Beijing-based artist speaks with such a gentle, sheepish voice that, when she finally turns in a succinct remark, it already sounds like an emphatic statement. To be exact, the sentence is: “None whatsoever.”

Speaking over the phone from her Beijing studio ahead of her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, pertinently titled Unbearable Beauty, Chen has just been asked about the degree to which her art reflects her personality. She continues after a brief pause, “Because I’m a really easygoing person, while my works are sometimes quite extravagant, displaying strong personality. They give a totally opposite impression to my own person.”

And there, in a nutshell, you have Chen Man. Here is an artist who isn’t just consumed by an obsession with depicting feminine beauty; rather, you get the feeling that Chen – a fantastic stylist and a wizard in digital post production – wouldn’t be happy if her images retained their verisimilitude in the final print of her work. The sense of unrealistic perfection permeating her art can be characterized by their vibrancy of colours, as well as the impeccably polished complexions and fantastical make-ups on her photo subjects.

In the artist’s own generalisation, the first phase (out of three) of her career thus far represents the time from 2003 to 2007, when she did a series of covers for Vision, a prominent art and fashion magazine in China. When she started in 2003, Chen was still a student of graphic design and photography at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts. “I did a lot of retouching at the time,” she recalls, “because I was younger. I shot only one photo a month, so I did a lot of things with it.”

The series gained Chen her first recognition in the field, which eventually translated into the second phase – beauty-oriented fashion shoots. Chen’s visually striking aesthetics have seen her regularly contributing to the Chinese editions of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, among others; advertising campaigns for international brands, such as P&G, Sony Ericsson, Adidas, Nike, and L’Oréal, followed. Her 2006 portrait shoot of David Beckham for Motorola may be her most notable assignment to date.

The third phase, of course, refers to Chen’s subsequent dip into fine art photography. While admitting that she sometimes takes her models’ faces for canvas (she started painting at the age of two), it is probably her creative influences – including artist Matthew Barney, photographer Nick Knight and the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen – that contributed most to her avant-garde approach. Interestingly, the artist is largely oblivious to any connection between her work and the tradition of surrealist art. “Perhaps I am [influenced by it], but I haven’t paid much attention,” Chen says. “What I’m concerned with is the local Chinese elements.”

Such ‘local elements’ are a recurrent feature in our conversation and, indeed, the majority of Chen’s artworks. “The experience of growing up in the 1980s and 90s has a great influence [on us]. First of all, our generation is at least guaranteed the basic standard of living. It’s only after that that people will think about things like art and fashion,” Chen explains. “We’ve experienced the beginning of the digital era, the blossoming of the Internet and the pirated [media]. They allow us to instantly get in touch with the rest of the world.”

As it turns out, the artist’s latest works are directly informed by the cultural happenings in the decades she grew up in. In her new 2010 series, Environmental Protection, the artist contemplates the place of electronic waste in China’s increasingly prosperous society – by literally putting abandoned computer wires and mobiles phone components onto the heads of her naked models. “This is to bring together the message of environmental protection and the fashionable spirit,” offers Chen. “I want to show people that what they threw away can also be turned into something beautiful.”

In comparison, her Young Pioneer series (2009) is probably closer to the artist’s heart. For it, Chen evokes her own childhood by dressing a “typical Chinese girl” with “what we wore as Young Pioneers, [a mass youth organisation under the Communist Party,] when we were children” – only that the clothing material is “more transparent and fashionable”. More intriguingly, in each of the pieces, Chen has digitally juxtaposed the girl(s) respectively with images of three Chinese landmarks: the CCTV (China Central Television) Tower, Chang’e-1 Lunar Probe, and the Three Gorges Dam.

Despite their undeniable visual attractiveness, Chen reveals that there is a darker edge to her artworks lurking behind their shiny appearances. “We’re the generation after the Chinese economic reform; the [societal] development is smooth, but it also brings about many problems that are not very obvious on the outside,” she says. “I usually use very beautiful imageries to represent the dangerous, hidden problems underneath.”

Unbearable Beauty: Chen Man is at Ooi Botos Gallery until May 22. The artist’s limited edition monograph, Chen Man: Works 2003-2010, is published by 3030 Press and is out now.