Strange, this is how these pictures appear at first sight. In front of typical Chinese urban backdrops young Chinese men and women present oil paintings by American and European artists from different epochs. Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, even photographs by Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Bernd and Hilla Becher or August Sander can be found among the works. What stands behind all this?

In fact we see pictures of a multi-million dollar industry – the production of copies of popular artworks, which are sold at giveaway prices into the whole world. Van Gogh: $ 75, Andy Warhol: $ 45, Ed Ruscha $ 50. The handpainted copies mainly come from China, the buyers can almost entirely be found in the United States and Europe, the countries of origin of the unaffordable originals.

Michael Wolf has photographed the Chinese copy-artists in a fantastic way and in his pictures he has placed manifold relations between the picture subject, the urban environment and the portrayed artists, that reach far beyond the superficial humor.

這些照片乍看之下令人感到很奇怪：在典型的中國城市背景前，不同年輕的中國男女展示著來自不同時代的美國和歐洲藝術家的油畫 －倫勃朗、梵高、安迪·沃霍爾、艾德·拉斯查，甚至李·弗里德蘭德、威廉·埃格爾斯頓、貝恩德和希拉·貝歇爾或奧古斯特·桑德……這些藝術家的作品都可以在這些照片中找到。 這一切代表著甚麼？

其實，於這系列中，我們看到的是一個價值數百萬美元的產業的記錄 －流行藝術品的複製生產，這些複製品以有如贈品般的價格出售給全世界。 梵高：75美元、安迪沃霍爾：45美元、艾德·拉斯查：50美元。這些手繪的複製品主要來自中國，而買家幾乎來自美國和歐洲，原因是他們負擔不起原作的價格。

Michael Wolf 以奇妙的方式拍攝了中國的臨摹藝術家，在他的作品中，畫面主題、城市環境和被捕捉的藝術家之間建立了多種關係，結果遠遠超出了單純的幽默感。