Chinese contemporary art, through its 20 some years’ ups & downs, has finally come on top of the traditional art. Star artists such as Wang Guangyi, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Xiaodong & Fang Lijun’s names are among the most popular role models. As commercial value of art is getting more & more recognized now, the production of art also starts to replace the creativity of original art. Stars have become the creations of commercialization. More & more emerging artists also joined in this fashion. Icons such as Wang Guangyi’s Great Criticism; Zhang Xiaogang’s Big Family; Fang Lijun’s large-than-life faces are much regenerated & copied. Thus, all kinds of obvious icons, big heads, twisted expressions, colorful symbols, images from the Cultural Revolution, Coke bottles & montage of Chinese traditional landscape swept the whole of Chinese contemporary art scene. Thus, the criteria of judging contemporary Chinese art is simply based on icons instead of art work itself or the creativity. Born mostly in the ‘70s & ‘80s, the group of artists who particapating in “My Private Idaho” are those among the most active individuals based in the South of The Yangtze River, literally Shanghai & Hangzhou. Influenced by their ancestors & the tradition of culture, art, literature & its poetic landscape, they are ever so sensitive to today’s change in politics, economy & social structure. From each everyone’s own individual point of view, they raise questions, explore possibilities to what they hear, see, feel & think. Without the typical “big face”, or political pop, they bring art with the mark of their time to us – letting us have the opportunity to see what the other side of the contemporary China art scene is like now. Their art mark a certain time, a certain artistic experiments & experience, the inspiration of every day life. Hard to group them together perhaps, their creations will no doubt leave us to ponder, even to search for answers. Zhang Ping expresses her childhood psychological emotion which is buried underneath its individual psychology. Her works reveal the fierce undercurrents of today’s social phenomenon & the loss of good nature in a commercial environment. Sun Yao puts himself in deep searching of the inner world of human being & the difference of the world which we live in & the world there might exist, in a hope to create a world suitable for the intellectuals of the 21st century, rather similar to the Shangri-La everyone searched for centuries ago. Xie Caomin uses a very masterful skill in making works which look almost like something machine made to mock today’s re-production of art.Jin Yangping & Yu Xuhong seem to refuse to leave the landscape they live. Their interpretations of course are no old fashioned traditional Chinese landscape paintings. On their canvases, Yu’s ‘shadows’ indicate the loss of spiritual world while Jin’s re-organized ‘landscape’ draw out a fine picture of our nature being violated. Liang Yi & Wang Muchun stretched out for the nature of painting itself. From their very ‘traditional’ looking paintings, they show us how ink painting or landscape paintings could meet today’s digital demands, thus raising the question of the spirit of painting itself.Gao Shiqiang’s micro-scoped video work has brought us a kind lose-tight mental situation. It seems light & easy, but one can feel for the intensity of being on the verge of the relationship. Zheng Duanxiang’s photos again show us how much the artist induldge himself ina world he ctreated for himself. He shot wasted things, places to discover neew meaning of things as well definition.The form directs directly to our inner world & the depth of our memoroes. A new kind of meaning riseds to a different height like reborn. Xiao Min & Gao Shan use their skilled experiemental technique & material to comb the language of sculpture. They both use manmade fibres to portrait historical images of importance. The conbination of mising & natural start a new dialogue. It is hard to determine their purpose is mutual influential or mutual presurising, leaving the final result a logical but obsurd relationship of fasade & material itself. Li Chuhui’s miniature society is like a story of its own. The absurdity of scenery & reality of characters sharply contracted each other. The ‘small me’ is packed up in an unreal but ideal setting. The details show us the connections of real world & its today-ness. Wang Zhibo, Zhang Wenjia & Mou Fangling exercise their experience of age. Born in the ‘80s, they are ever so sensitive to the connection & difference of experience of the individual & the society. They, in the end, opt for all possibilities. The false environment, shadowy images, surreal colors reflect their own feeling & experience. It becomes an attitude, an attitude of individualism towards society. It is a landscape felt & dealt by the vulnerable. Perhaps, no one is in a position to forecast the future direction of Chinese contemporary art, nor could anyone predict whether these young artists would open a new page in Chinese contemporary art history. What is worth here is the kind of spiritual persistency & serious way these young creative minds look at what they have taken on, from their heart to their mind thus to what we see right in front of us, truthfully.