In qi peng’s ironic yet poignant debut show at a certain Lower East Side gallery lasting in less time than a single workday of Jack Bauer within a season of the TV show “24,” envoy enterprises is proud to present a fresh piece of conceptual art entitled “the qi peng dynasty (we are duchampions)” to the public. This complex installation art features a hybrid fusion between traditional works on paper and painting and cutting-edge new media art, particularly based on the idea of autobiography loosely based on James Joyce’s novel “A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man” smashed with Facebook and Xerox.

peng combines selected “interview portraits,” which he has published through www.examiner.com as an online art project, between art professionals which he has met in real life or Facebook or Twitter or other social networking websites into a larger installation project. By delivering a cross section of the international art world, focusing on New York City and Los Angeles mostly with a small dose of his current hometown of Salt Lake City, the artist attempts to democratize how the public perceives any particular individual within this complex web of artists, art dealers, museum curators, art workers, and slaves who comprise this whole system of people who put together contemporary art for the audience. By displaying offset prints of these portraits like a digital version of August Sander photographs, peng attempts to humanize the art world as an antithesis to the glossy art market and blue chip players portrayed by the magazines.

This installation piece will present secondary documents that will reflect on how the artist’s first solo show in New York City became extant at envoy enterprises. Mixing together proposals, acceptance and rejection letters, critiques, as well some surprising documents that feature a Chelsea gallery, and a painting that is based on a prominent Brooklyn artist with overtones of the idea of “WWPD,” this work becomes a brave exploration of the politics of how exhibitions are created and galleries are curated. Also this is a fairly dispassionate view of the artist’s subjective journey from a virtually unknown artist as a displaced New Yorker located in Utah into a slowly emerging artist as a small player within the international art world. He also highlights the challenges of an atypical Utah conceptual artist attaining both “critical affirmation” and “artistic defiance” with and against the somewhat insular New York contemporary art world reframed as the Garden of Eden.

There will be a surprise ending to the whole installation and a possible inclusion of the following events: an artist book signing at a table, an unexpected appearance of the Zero Dollar project by Laura Gilbert, a performance duel between Rick Herron and the artist himself, and guest appearances by famed bootlegger Eric Doeringer and collaborating artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton. The audience may be able to say hello to the following celebrities: James Kalm, Jerry Saltz, or James Wagner. 10% of the complete installation’s sale will be donated to a non-profit organization helping out the victims of the Madoff investment scandal.

“the qi peng dynasty (we are duchampions)” is the Salt Lake City artist’s first attempt at a solo show anywhere in his homebase of New York City. He needs all the luck that he can get from a broken leg.