"The oil painting of SHOW series created by Cao Xifeng, a young artist, associates obviously with the complicated entangelment with the city; however, it is not directly rational observation of social phenomenon, rather than an individual experience of city life’s various aspects, including the profundity of city’s legend, as well as city’s empire; an indepth of contemplation of the people who lives in the margin of the city, is well expressed through absurd yet vain illusion by time and space, as well as subtle joy and sorrow…

   The SHOW series of Cao’s works, probably disclose the most significant issue of the contemporary, while the concept of SHOW spreads out from the perspective of economic operation, to that of cultural inflation; to SHOW yourself also becomes a trend yet sensitive motto to those red boys and green girls, who grow up in the cartoon and computer world, cultivated and shaped by various medias. They are the shining fresh elements of the modern city life, however, those fashionable sharp make-up, costume, as well as the pose of those figures, are merely the copies of those by different visual media, interwoven the superficial joy with eccentric inner fragility, reflecting the multi-dimensional sphere of metropolitical psychology. Cao’s SHOW series create such an image of a group of young people,depicting transparently fragile details by its brush, seemingly like the feeling of glass; however, the technique and the use of colors make the spectator see a trendy, exagerated, and coyly behaved model, through a misty layer; yet could not see the real, just like a game or an illusive world.'

by Hu Bin, Guangdong Art Museum