CHINA IN HIS HANDS

In Britain, even Turner-Prize winning artists go about their daily business largely unnoticed. Most people, for example, would be hard pressed to make a positive identification of Damien Hirst, even if he was taking an unusually long time pondering dead animals in his local butcher's. In contrast, Chen Yifei, widely regarded as China's most influential artist, enjoys rock-star adulation in his homeland. Next week, British audiences have their first chance to decide whether he merits pin-up status here, when his one-man show opens at Marlborough Fine Art. His recent retrospectives at the Shanghai Museum and the China National Museum of Fine Arts were huge critical successes. Born in Ningbo, Zhejiang province in 1946, Yifei's early work was denounced for betraying "capitalist influences". Yet his talent couldn't be ignored for long - he was regularly summoned to Beijing to undertake major public works and painted many large-scale portraits of Chairman Mao. By the early Eighties he was hailed as the leading Chinese artist of his generation and left for America. His "intriguing mix of of Western technique and Chinese sensibilities" can be seen in London from Thursday.

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