At the center of Ma Ke’s work, one often finds the human form placed in seemingly surreal settings. In distorted representational forms, it assumes a strong presence in the picture: The bodies are frequently stretched vertically, and at times the heads are equipped with
unnaturally high foreheads. Time and again, Ma Ke’s characters seem to tamper with strange gadgets, some of which, conversely, seem to be connected to the body. Are the blocks Ma Ke shows attached to a figure’s leg the McLuhanian machines of the electronic age? The media theoretician Marshall McLuhan views media as extensions of the human sensory apparatus, but also as amputations thereof. In his theories, he queries how mediality changes human beings and, with them, society, and how it thus directly determines human thought, action, and perception. Ma Ke was also heavily influenced by Chinese media policies and social practices in China. In the beginning, his work was informed by traditional Chinese oil paintings and socialist realism, until he developed a wholly new way of perceiving at the Art Academy of Tianjin, liberated himself from restrictions, and found his way to his own artistic language.
