(Reported by STIR News, June 2009) Lo Chan Peng, a new-generation artist celebrated for his masterful photorealist technique, opened his first solo exhibition, “Strawberry Generation Studio Invasion,” in June amid considerable media attention. Crowned with honours such as the first prize of the Kaohsiung Art Award, the artist — born in 1983 — had already proven to the world that he was no “strawberry”: bright on the outside but easily bruised.

Lo first drew notice with his “Youth Diary of the Strawberry Generation” series, recording the subculture of his own “strawberry” generation in painting so lifelike that first-time viewers tend to gasp, “Surely this is a photograph!” Yet beyond admiration for technique, what Lo most wanted viewers to see at this stage lay beneath the surface. The “Youth Diary” was never a mere record of youthful fashion: on one hand it probed the impact of computer technology on traditional painting; on the other, it used these seemingly carefree, glossy young figures to hint at a side of them no one understood.

Running through the four chapters — “Cell Division,” “Night Parade of a Hundred Demons” and “Great Melee” — is the thread of Lo’s own upbringing. Facing the upheavals of his time and circumstances, he turned an unnameable “anxiety” into the engine of his work, and found the courage to speak his inner mind through painting and to claim a voice for his generation.