-- Excerpt by Jerome Silbergeld, P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University
"One would be hard-pressed to find a "more Chinese" artist than Michael Cherney also known as Qiu Mai in Chinese (or Autumn Wheat) (b. 1969). Photographer, calligrapher, and book artist, Cherney’s work is done with the great sophistication that draws on the subtleties of China’s most scholarly and esoteric traditions. Based in Beijing and a successful artist whose works have been collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Asian Art (the first photographic works ever to enter the collection of that department), Cherney’s art is less provocative than it is intellectually engaging, meditative, and often simply beautiful. His work is the cutting-edge demonstration of artistic globalization: if Asian artists can so readily “come West,” then what is to prevent large numbers of future Western artists from “going Asian”? Or, like Qiu Mai/Michael Cherney, going both ways at once, both American and Chinese, modern and traditional."
