Mao’s engagement with the distortion of cultural references is also reflected in the exhibition through photography and collage, harnessing the reproductive properties of the photo medium to appropriate the fight scenes of martial arts films, as well as addressing the way kung-fu mythos is processed through time and cultures. Mao’s potent series of C-prints The Battle Wizard represent the heroes in ethereal transformative situations. An allusion to Italian Futurist Anton Giulio Bragaglia, these prints attempt to capture the metaphysical with photography. – excerpt of press release of Dead Reckoning, solo exhibition at Collette Blanchard Gallery.
