As a media artist,Jiang Zhuyun puts questions about images into discussion at the level of the relationship between visual technology and visual experience,from which a lot of sensitive and tactful visual experiments are derived.For example,he made a visual device,in which people can see their left eyes by their own right eyes through the reflection of a U-shape mirror.He made a little joke to people with the simplest visual technology.

 

The Flow of a Melting Contour in One Day presents a kind of technological poetry with stronger laboratory style.In every 15 seconds during a whole day,there are six cameras taking photos of a chair,focusing on different positions of the chair.And one of the chair legs is made of ice.Finally all the photos are edited into a fourscreen image,angles and focuses of which are switched back and forth.In the image,the chair appears to "swing" repeatedly as the viewpoint changes.Yet the ice is gradually melting down in this kind of special cycle,causing the disappearance of the chair leg,while time presents its irreversibility.

Xu Yong installs on the camera a lens modified out of focus,which will revert every object it takes into a lump of blurred light.This turns photography,an artistic practice that has been full of political and aesthetic elements,back to a pure physical event.Based on the same logic,post-processing by directly printing the photo,to be exact,the optical representation on the surface of various materials,such as photographic paper,canvas,metal and glass,is also a presentation of the unavoidable physical property of photos.

 

When watching these works placed directly on floor,people find it difficult to relate to photography or photos; however,this is exactly the critical fact that Xu Yong wants to tell about photography: Photography is,first and foremost,the story about device,light,and substance,rather than images that have been instrumentalized by all kinds of ideologies.

 

Wang Ningde has designed and made a lot of special slide projector,with a flash light assembled inside the rear end as the light source.Every time the light flashes,images on the slides will be projected.It is actually a reverse of the process of shooting.Generally,the work of the camera is to expose outside images on the photographic film; however,in Wang's works,images are projected outside from inside.Only one slide is put into the device,from which only one image is projected,but the flashing images at a 18% faster speed cause the audience an illusion of moving.In this sense,Wang's works contain as well his understanding and analysis on motion pictures.

 

Projected from the devices are all kinds of head portrait,eyes closed,that he has collected,which seems that these faces are making reaction to the intense flash.In this case,the light in the image has been no longer a kind of negative or neutral tool,but a more positive medium.

On the film developed the land form shaped billions of years ago,which is then projected again on the grand-scale wet plate in the darkroom.In Luo Dan's work When to Leave ,photography is experienced in a grand scale beyond individual and human beings,whose core value has been transformed from instrumental optics to a kind of "ligh-object" ontology.

 

In this sense,photography is no longer the observation under geometricoptics,but has transformed from human's representation of the world to the world's demonstration on us.At the most macro but fundamental level,isn't light and time what the world wants to presents through photography? Light and time are in unity.It is light,as a constant,defines the spatial and temporal scale of the knowable universe,and thus it is a kind of prior form,as well as the framework and carrier of everything.Moreover,we can comprehend the universe as an on-going exposure,in which we are experiencing the long process of developing.In this sense,Luo Dan’s understanding of time and light has actually exceeded the cultural concept of photography.Photography is a witness of light and time,that is,the authenticity of the world.

Xie Guixiang's photography bypasses physical steps such as lens and shutter,and directly jumps to the chemical part.For instance,he wraps organic matters,such as fruits,fish and seeds,into development paper and buries them in the soil,in order to produce direct rubbing-type development reaction between them.He also arranges iced developer solution and fixer solution in the layout of a chessboard,producing an image of black and white liquid flowing and mixing when the ice cubes melt down on the photographic paper.In his latest work The Relics ,he directly burns and fixes the relics from his grandmother on the photographic paper,in order to record this memorial ceremony by photogram.

 

Jumping over the camera means breaking through artificial limits for observation,which has not only emancipated people's observation mode from machines,but also liberated the presentation path of objects.Xie Guixiang eventually eliminates the difference between subject and object in the new "photographic" dimension.

Qin Yifeng started photography from taking photos of Chinese simple-styled furniture of Ming Dynasty.He chose some particular partial compositions and independent pieces to keep the final photo and the object in consistency: the feeling of restraint,prudence,and introversion.This series involves not only pictorial aesthetics,but moreover,the aesthetics of material concept.He directly scans and enlarges that black-and-white film,presenting the original negative image on the film,and at the same time,pressing the objective image into the thickness of a piece of film and the color gamut of the film base.

 

In fact,these works should not be merely considered as photos of furniture,but also a dialogue among physical properties: texture of the wood,structure of the furniture,the black and white colors,the film grains,as well as the dates,times and weathers appear in work titles.In this sense,photography presents its original place in the truth of things.

We believe that as the operation of a camera becomes automatic and intuitive,the working principle of a tool-its latent default rules will be concealed deeper for its users.Camera plays a significant role in the process of images being endowed with meaning.The structure of camera has a direct influence on the photos we can take,and thus controls the way we observe and explore the outside world.When we give up studying and criticizing the rules and limits behind image production,technology,which seems to make photography freer,may actually restrict the generation of new narrative patterns.

 

Therefore,in this series,we try to begin with the tool,method and process of producing images,to analyze and reflect on the fundamental elements of photography.

 

Seemingly old-school technology is used in the work-not for nostalgic purpose,but that its flexibility can better illustrate the role that camera plays in photographing.We try to divert and topple the image language in the instructions booklet: acting as an operator of the camera,which looks like demonstrating the correct method of application,but actually is an invader of the device who grants them new functions.

Range: of Masters of Photography considers an analog history of photography within the digital torrent that is its current technological manifestation.For this project I focus on iconic images of mountains in various online and print media such as Aperture's Masters of Photography book series.I downloaded hundreds of camera apps for my iPhone to re-photograph the masters' mountains and process them through the multiple filters of the camera apps.Photo grain,dot-screen,pixel,and screen resolution collide performing undulating moirés.The hallucinogenic colors of the camera app filters blend with the disorienting effects of the iPhone's gravity sensor to dislodge any perception of stability in the mountain,the master (most often gendered as male),or the photographic medium.In this work the mountain,the oldest landmark,site of orientation,and spiritual contemplation,becomes unstable,mobile,has no gravity,and changes with each iteration.

 

Central to this work is the overwhelming number of camera app filters that simulate the mistakes of analogue film photography.Light leaks and chemical burn filters are especially absurd in the context of both analog photography and smartphone camera technology: "master" photographers would never accept such mistakes in their work,and the impossibility of holes,gaps,spatial volume,or liquid chemical necessary to produce these effects,stands in complete opposition to the very apparatus simulating them.If light is the first and foremost element of all photography,the role of light in this context is inverted.These "leaks" are the result of an algorithm loaded into the vacuum of a chip,capable of producing nearly endless variations within the space of a few seconds.

 

Range: of Masters of Photography presents a dialogue between distance and proximity,limited and unlimited,the singular and the multiple,the fixed and the itinerant,the master and the copy.

Ever since photography was invented,especially when photography became a common way of visual record,a huge amount of photos have been produced,out of which there were a lot of negative films being left behind in film bags,on document shelters,and in file cabinets,until they finally appeared in the flea market.A part of these films are called wasted films because of all kinds of technological or aesthetic faults.Zhu Yingying's works are sourced from these wasted films.

 

However,she treats and uses these films in a way of aesthetic re-appreciation.A set of failed photos of geographic scenes are linked according to the curves and waves of the mountains,to construct a traditional landscape painting; or,fragments of failed exposure but with wonderful colors are selected from colored wasted films,to integrated into an image similar to the optical spectrum.In these works,our perception is brought to where nearly be forgotten in the image world.

Zhang Liaoyuan has always been an artist emphasizing technological criticism.In his latest work,he uses ending processes like printing,mounting and displaying as starting ones such as focal point and object of modification,producing a series of creative destruction at hardware level.Rising a print head up to 1.1cm; printing images on a cutting-up board or a sponge board; making picture frames into folded or broken shapes; or installing the frames with figured glass or frosted glass.All of these tactful yet unreasonable ways are intense "criticism" on the inactive photography that people have been accustomed to.

 

The target of the media criticism behind these works is not oriented to a kind of substantial media nature,but to analyze any potential art morphology concept.In this sense,naming them as "photography" is as well an ironic act.

In the photography system,photos' physical existence seems to be considered as a kind of default settings,or merely the carrier of images.But in Cai Dongdong's recent works,photos' value is presented.He used abandoned photos as readymades,which are used as not only images,but also pieces of tangible paper.They can be bent,folded,scratched,punctured,cut,and woven,during which those inconspicuous images are modified and reconstructed on the hardware base,and are thus endowed with new meanings.

 

In artistic practice nowadays,the boundary of language is enlarged along with the creation.So is that in image art.In Cai Dongdong's works,for example,photographic paper,mounting method,ways of display and other dependent elements are pushed to the forefront,which changes our perception of photography in an unexpected aspect.

Based on a personal approach,Thomas Sauvin has dispatched several touts specialised in vintage photography,who search for unusual material in Chinese markets under a single watchword: 'surprise me'.In this way,in 2014 while one of them was in Baoguosi market in Beijing,he telephoned informing him of his discovery – "a strange album".Once Thomas Sauvin held the object in his hands,he quickly understood he was handling an unusual elaborate couturier's sewing kit,a work that was entirely handmade,a maze of folded paper in which threads,needles and patterns cut out of newspapers intertwined with one another.When he contemplated this object,he saw more than mere paraphernalia necessary for housewives in 1960s China: he deciphered a similar kind of magic that surrounded cabinets of curiosities in the Renaissance period and Chinese materiamedica closets,which comprised multiple drawers hiding well-kept secrets.This is how he has developed the idea of populating this quirky object by faithful reproductions of vintage prints,which belong to the collection he has been acquiring from all over China for several years.Entitled Xian ,similarly to the thread Thomas Sauvin has found inside one of these minuscule paper boxes,the object is revisited and composed of fifty-nine boxes that unveil,in turn,ninety prints of variable sizes that one randomly discovers as and when one allows drawers to open.The paper maintains its initial shape.Its fibres memorize every single folding and unfolding; it does not fear hand manipulation.In fact,Xian is not designed to become a photographic mausoleum but rather a living thing,an ideal assemblage of a memory in progress.The images – selected from a richly variegated archive – emerge from their black boxes,delighted to see the light and to be taken by a hand that plays around with them so as to scrutinize them.Mentally disordered persons,coquettish women,and amazed tourists appear either in black and white or in colour.Butterfly-shaped portraits of anonymous persons coexist with strange celebrities,such as the acrobat Huang Shuying or the apeman Yu Zhenhuan.Flowers adorned with admirable calligraphy spread out nearby archaeological remains.Xian unfolds and discloses Chinese modern and contemporary memory by revealing images that function as reminders against oblivion,images that one simply needs to remove from their "pharmaceutical drawer".The fifth publication of Thomas Sauvin – collector since 2006 – Xian does not designate only the couturier’s thread,it also reifies the thread of a story.One can freely remodel the plot as one opens the little and skilfully folded envelopes inside which,perhaps,other fragments of life will eventually blend together.

In 2015,French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student.The album comprises original negatives,silver prints,manuscript comments from an anonymous professor,and shows the student’s diligence in mastering the rules applying to the conventional portrait.This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike,a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography.

 

The series,No More,No Less ,born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin,includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives.These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination,who,with a simple blade and adhesive tape,deconstructs and reinvents the images.However,these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed,nothing is added,“No More,No Less”.In such a context that blends freedom and constraint,Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.

The partnership between Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima,born in 1976,began in the late 1990s.Since then,they have used different languages such as video,objects and gambiarras,using patterns,measures,structures and their variations to create highly constructed situations.In them,natural,mathematical and artificial elements emulate organic behavior,synthesize natural phenomena and create some ambiguity,despite their apparent objectivity.It is precisely the ambivalent region between the synthetic of the natural and the natural of the synthetic that the artists exploit.

 

The duo demonstrates that ones work is not restricted to the discussion of his means,at the same time that each technical resource has latent expressive virtues and possibilities that can be mobilized or subverted by the artist.

 

Of the many tasks art has taken for itself in the history of mankind,one of the most persistent has been the making of representations of parcels of the world.Today,when not all art represents something and everything that represents something is art,a work like that of Motta and Lima offers elaborate emulations of the real,be it with the most advanced or the simplest of technologies.The fundamental thing for artists is not to create replicas or simulations identical to the real,but to produce concrete systems that work in equivalent way to the phenomena that interest them.By producing images of the world that are so explicitly artificial,Gisela and Leandro end up presenting the constructed portion of any perception of the real,however immediate it may seem.

URAITZ is a project that fuses photography and pictorial gesture to approach the Paleolithic culture through the image.After visiting Paleolithic settlements located in some of the most important caves in Europe,my approach to the subject has evolved visibly influenced by those aspects that frame human imprints in the caves: The ritual character of representations - an act that has value by itself–,the creation of a complex symbolic world of deep meaning,and the important presence of the feminine.

 

According to the anthropological studies,the cave was conceived as a female entity that emulated a maternal womb.A mineral lap that welcomes and intimidates,enhances the sensation of spatial disorientation and the corporal character of the aesthetic experience.To underline this experience I seek to intensify the tactile,almost sculptural qualities that were already visible in my previous series.The process aims to provide photographs with a layer of materic consistency.The colors I use are obtained from mineral pigments (manganese and ochre) or organic (coal) that I collect in the mountains or produce myself.I use the same techniques used by the human being in the Paleolithic: I apply the pigments with the fingers or the palm of my hand,use vegetable fibers that function as a sort of paintbrushes,and pulverize the pigments using an "airbrush" made of bone.

 

The name of the project "URAITZ " is written in Euskera,the language of the Basque Country,where I was born.It includes the two characteristic elements to obtain the color I apply in the photographs: UR (water used to dilute the pigment) and AITZ (stone mineral from which the pigment is obtained).

My father is a military man and my mother is a plastic artist.That has resulted in a mixture of structure and need for expression that is always in conflict.A traditionally Catholic upbringing generated in me,from very small,a symbolic imaginary that has its consequences.

 

My work is between the fissures that exist between the production of traditional cinema and the video art further away from the traditional screens.It is of my interest the exploration in new cinematographic or videographic resources.Applying multimedia and new media.The expression beyond the word,without limiting with pre-assigned edges the understanding and perceptual ability of the viewer.In the same way,the process of creation by an author cinema that is always personal and with the search for a particular look.

 

I have a marked interest in the contents of social order and an exploration of themes such as the sacred and its symbolic drifts and the relationship between image and time,image and history and image and truth.

 

I seek to generate a time of transcendence between being and totality,between the individual and the surrounding universe,through contemplation and sensory impulses composing audiovisual harmonies.In addition to the themes,the reflection on the same medium and its repercussions on space-distance and space-time.

 

It is in my interest to concentrate on the possibilities of the audiovisual language,through its traditional form and its new means.Develop a personal aesthetic and think about the audiovisual,within the context of predominance of the image,as a way to be-in-the-world and give it meaning.

The plants communicate with each other and their environment.They are not inanimate beings and are served by light and chemical processes to feed,communicate and interact with animals.My approach to this particular universe is through analog photography,because it uses,like plants,light and chemical processes to meet their goals.

 

In my opinion,the representation of the properties and invisible attributes of the medicinal plants should include the memory of the changes in their environment over centuries,which gives them a good part of his natural mystic.

 

The absence of external signs that identify to the plants,it complicates their identification and representation.So,that's why I use photography,it is a susceptible tool that could make something be unseen to visible to perception.Also,photography is a permea - ble support to the external interventions,which extend the semantic field of images.

 

In this set I have worked with the Peruvian Amazon's flora by merging each plant with its environment with photographs made in double exposure,which I intervene intuitively: drawing dots and lines that symbolize the movement of insects and fluctuation of the chemicals they emit.

 

The fact that we can't see them,doesn't mean they don't exist,what is visible is only a part of reality.

Placing a blank photo frame in the nature environment,Anothermountainman turns the shadows of tree branches under sunlight into his own "photographic works".Just as Nièpce calling photography "sun drawing",or Talbot naming his collection as Pencil of Nature ,Anothermountainman's works are the responses to these most original photographic concepts.

 

On the other hand,however,he has to record his work with photography,turning the moment when the shadow casts in the frame into a photo.Therefore two kinds of photography are introduced to us,one of which is related to concept,light and shadow,and time; the other is bonded to device,viewfinder,and photographic paper.

Site began with the endless act of reviewing and selecting images from an enormous body of digital images.Photographs previously used in past works such as Back Yard were also included in the selection.The selected images have been altered to the point where the figures have been erased and only the background remains.

 

Yokota's approach to photography has been heavily influenced by how film and music express the flow of time.Yokota attempts to create the illusion of time in photography by deconstructing photographic images that point to a moment in the past.It is this deconstruction of the image which can be perceived as adding an additional layer of meaning to the image which can be constituted as "the present".

 

Furthermore,by repeatedly using the same images in numerous series,the photographer illustrates how the meaning of each image changes over time.Each new meaning attached to the image is significant in illustrating the passage of time,and therefore adds an increased awareness of reality.In Site,the details in the foreground of the images have been eliminated,thereby allowing the only background to be interpreted by the audience.This allows the viewer to absorb the images into one's consciousness and let themselves be immersed by the flowing of time which exude from the photographs without having to be distracted by frivolous detail.

 

In addition to Photoshop,re-touching and scanning,Yokota also poured boiling water over film during the development process in order to melt the emulsion and generate distortions and additional noise to the images.In this manner,Yokota pushes the boundaries of photography as a medium and forces us,the viewer,to re-think how photography is defined.

 

Site/Cloud is based on the series Site ,but integrates Yokota's Cloud images.The photographer applies the same process used for the series Site,but in contrast to the previous series,Site/Cloud carries a quality of lightness that can be found in snapshots.Also,the vivid colors of the images indicate a distinct change in style.In his previous work,the production process was the focal point of his photography,however in this series Yokota has naturally incorporated this production process in Site/Cloud in order to place a focus on the final product: a photograph.Yokota repeatedly visits an invisible place called Cloud,where an accumulation of the images used throughout the photographer's oeuvre can be found.

We go into the circle by night and we are consumed by fire.

 

While trying to take language to its ultimate limits,I turn it into material that is legible for a spectator for whom it is alien.That is the paradox of my work,which goes from the pure intensity of experience to a necessary formal utterance.Permanent flux of images,continuous disorders that break down to the brutal reality of an intimate experience of violence.The process leaves no room for lies.The impetuous need to live the situations I document leads to an inevitable slip from what one could consider the photographic idea towards performance and action: a motion of flux,a stream of images,materials,sensations and feelings.

 

The only markers are a few surviving images and each image is just a pause in a continuum of sensations,in an endless flow of life,emotions,gestures,situations.Each image is the seal of this paradox: it is both a fixed object and a sample,a puncture,a precipitation,in the chemical sense.The concretion of an experienced event,of a sequence of existence.A leftover,the remnant of actions or situations that are unrepresentable.The visible loses its materiality and slowly dissolves in a flood of hollow images,in a phantasmagorical space devoid of depth or substance.I yield to instinct and the urgency of existence.I make use of the world to my own ends,as a modest part of the fierce and endless struggle between the forces of abstraction and the mechanics of flesh.The only form worth considering is one that is forced by the context,not emerging from the gaz e,but from the heart of the event.

Chen Xiaoyun presents images as isolated movements in enclosed scenarios.Lengths of the images are also related to the time duration of these movements.Hence his works show a kind of event-based feature; the sharp contrast between light and shadow,and ritualized performance,add to the works colors of symbolic theater.

 

China's contemporary artistic image is developed from Hangzhou Image Movement.As a part of the movement,Chen Xiaoyun emphasizes non-narration in his works,so as to separate the language structure of image—including scenarios adjusting and shots switching—from the dependence on literariness,thus producing a site for concept reflection and rhetoric experiment.

Just as an eye blink denies the presence of a specific space or time within a continuum,so a frame freezes a particular place and moment.It is the indivisible unit of the audiovisual mechanism,and its basic inductor is light.Thereby begins a journey that takes us from the real to the represented,finally leading us to that ultimate reality,the document.

 

Inertia deals with the construction of reality.The piece emerged from some scenes,not included in the video of previous twilight project,that refer to the transit of light from one location to another.In both projects the lighting device engages directly with the real.In Inertia ,the route is a place and the vector imposes itself on the object.The present then tends to disappear in a continuous movement and what happens is indeed its non-presence.

 

In the process of preparing Inertia ,the need to question the structural parameters inherent to all audiovisual productions emerged.It is well-known that technical efforts are precisely measured in the film industry based on the profitability of certain scenes,we could call this is the hierarchy of images.Reacting to this,I approached the production of Inertia using pure analogic procedures.Here,the need we have to limit ourselves to the real is imposed against the indolent resource of postproduction.

 

Over its four-minutes length,Inertia responds to the conventions of rhythm,visual axes,and other narrative norms with the rules that we use to assimilate the entire audiovisual spectrum.There occurs a specific accident between the fragile rules of narration and the sophistication of what is staged,confronted with the inescapable physical connotations of gravity,weight,or the volume of the elements in its service.

With the unique triptych entitled The Mechanicals(Les Mécaniques) ,the artist investigates new territories through the combination of big scale photography,sculpture and performance in order to examine the notion of landscape itself in our contemporary society.A landscape is a constantly changing and never completed reality: its story unfolds through the nature of its various stratums,the variations of its ground and the influence of men.This body of work revolves around the territory as a spatiotemporal object and living entity always in motion.In contrast with her former installations in which the artist “fixed” materials,here,Goudal resorts to more complex devices in order to make time change tangible,as well as the choreographies of a continuously transitioning landscape.

 

The installation,which takes up the form of hundreds of mirror facets integrated in a wooden frame,is photographed in the middle of a tropical forest,first world source of biological diversity on Earth.The structure is conceived in such a way that the facets are slowly removed creating subtle kaleidoscopic reflections of the plant formations cast by the mirrors.The fragmented surface enquires the very act of observation of nature as well as our perception of image rooted in a shattered perspective.The deliberate and visible imperfections of the crafting blend with the green profusion of this vegetal microcosms made of several layers,from the ground to the canopy.

 

Like a live performance,the three photographs capture the alteration of the forest stratums.Between change,disappearance and renewal,these images highlight temporality at the Anthropocene era all the while revealing its artificiality.

The themes of Jiang Pengyi’s photography often switch among all kinds of “light”,from The Origins series on fluorescent materials,to Dark Addiction series on fireflies.In Dark Addiction ,he puts fireflies,flashing during courtship,into the camera obscura,letting their movements directly developed on the photographic film.The work’s title refers to the process of exposure.

 

From symbolic images production to conceptual media experiments,Chinese artists of the new generation are emphasizing more and more self-examination on the level of media language.Nevertheless,it should not be considered as the return of formalism (especially for the word’s negative meaning in China’s mainstream context),but ought to be comprehended as a kind of highlight of the media consciousness.Based on this,the expression of concepts,instead,gets deeper into technology,giving image art a kind of definiteness supported by media.

Ji Zhou consciously manages the influence of visual technology on our visual experience with his works.He makes full use of the potential of the advanced hardware and software,to turn daily visual into an extreme scene.In his latest works,he works with digital-cutting filming and splicing,which is,however,different from new objectivity photography.He deliberately retains,exposes,and even strengthens the features of picture splicing,and highlights the transformation of space and the continuation of time in one scenario,thus creating a visual image of "fourdimensional compound eye".

 

From telescope,microscope to camera,the constant update of visual technology is the most important cultural phenomenon in modern time.Besides strengthening and extending our eyesight,technology also brings those we have never seen before to our "innocent eyes".It is art's creative application of technology that has a close relation to the development of visual technology.

To Ma Qiusha,photography is a way of observation as well as production.Her works always contain the application of the two features.In The Story of Space,she uses partial photos matching to flatten the indoor space according to the structure of a box.

 

In the repeated switching between stereoscopic and flattened visions,Ma Qiusha takes the audience forth and back between the perception of objects and the deep illusion of space,offering a sense of presence of irrealism by photography.

Land is a photographic work in progress which aims to show cartographies of natural resources into the world,revealing the historical evolution of landscape,the political division of territory and geopolitical identity.

 

The images that make up the project were put together with maps taken from Google map which were printed in large scale and high definition.

 

They are satellite maps that reveal the topography of our world.

 

I am interested in seeing how utopias of modernity convert into a dystopian outcome.These maps seem to confront us with this otherness: social and economic distortion,environmental disaster,misplaced territorial boundaries and the uncertain future of our planet.

Caio Reisewitz's work sets out to establish connections between the construction of what is real and the recording of what is artificial through photography.The technical exactitude and eventual placidity of his works call for careful scrutiny: after the initial moment of aesthetic delight,one realizes his photographs do not obey a merely descriptive intention,and given the lack of human figures in the pictures,the gaze (the photographer's,which also becomes that of the beholder) constitutes the final instance of visual organization or interpretation,revealing the cultural aspects of an act normally apprehended as natural.

 

In his photomontages,in which the curator Fernando Cocchiarale detects traces of the Dadaist legacy of Hausmann and Hannah Höch,Brazilian Modern Photography as Geraldo de Barros,human beings can be present,but then again their statute appears in transfigured form.Transversally and silently,Reisewitz's little-human landscapes address humanity in one of its most grandiose gestures.

I make use of my personal history in order to speak about migration and identity as social constructions.I work with photographic archives because on the one hand,they enable me to build link between the present and the past,and the other,they allow me to question the role of the image or the saturation of the images in we live.

 

The voyage out of the place origin,the displacement and the arrival at the destination where everything in unknown,are important themes in my Project since they are for a start,the components of any migratory movement.I began the Project in 2014 and engaged in a visual narrative that addressed the customs of my family at home,and the photos of my grandfather′s albums that bear on the reverse the traces of having been torn out,by the remnants of dried glue and black paper (vestiges of álbum pages),reminisct in form of archipelagos (like Japan).On the one hand,i have configured a personal cartography from these black traces and have thus,built fictional maps: intimate materializations produce by chance,which i recognize and enlarge.On the other i have photographed domestic interiors to show the Japanese customs that persist,such us the remembrance of the dead,or the grove and tending of local versions of bonsái,and also the signs of cultural layers in arrangements of catholic religious icons in friction with japanese traditional objects and emblematic articles of the urban modernity in latin american countries.

 

The main motivation of the Project is to bring home my Japanese grandfather,who was never able to return to Japan,through an exihibition and a photobook.Maps are social and political conventions and the history of japanese migration to Peru is the chronical of a human group.Personally i generate new maps and stitch together documents that are left-overs from the past into a fiction of the present,and so redraw the world at the intersection where my imagination meets my memory.

Copying is what I'm interested in as the capability of photography.I use cameras as a tool to copy objects as exquisite as possible.I think when a copy looks close to what you see,it is the farthest from reality.I didn't use my camera to create this work TARANTELLA .I downloaded images from NASA's website and trimmed them.Images on the Internet do not belong to anyone else and it’s the same as the scenery I'm just looking at.I can call these are the photos taken by me even if I didn't use my camera and trim it on my screen.

In Jiang Zhi's latest work,he arranges a series of 1980s household scenarios to match different artificial flowers,and takes photos of them in similar popular style of that time.Photography's feature of objective record is hence used to create a real illusion.

 

Continuing the themes of flowers and time of Love Letters series,meanwhile,Jiang Zhi creates subtle cracks between the reality of emotional atmosphere and the illusion of details in the Faded Looks series,which thus concentrates the focus and audience's viewpoints on the visual representation of photography.

Tao Hui's image art is closely connected with the daily TV and movie experience of the Chinese people.He appropriates and makes up all kinds of familiar plots,lines,performances and roles.He then separates these elements and regroups them into his works,dramatically exposing the aesthetic ideology which is familiar to but ignored by the Chinese people.

 

In his most recent work,Joint Images ,actors were performing different emotional climaxes which were playing on the screen,including dialogues in classic TV series,expressions of affection in talent shows,or interviews in news programs.Once imitated,these emotional performances,sincere or not,will lead to an exaggerated absurdity and drive the audiences away from the sense of reality attempted to construct by the film and TV culture.

Chen Wei has always been working with construction and posed photography,producing scenes that appear only in photography.In his latest work,lights are focused on the window from different angles of "indoor" and "outdoor",making the window itself a scene,while leading the audience's views out of the window.

 

In Chen Wei's working patter,artificial light is both a significant language and an important theme.Lamps and lanterns,light boxes,LED,neon and other kinds of light properties always appear in his works,and themes of city night are thus generated.

Wang Yunpeng's works also touch upon every aspect of "image society" issues,including TV and movie culture,display technology,digit and simulation,images and words,vision and language,or even movie piracy and subtitle translation culture.Yet he does not stop on touching upon these issues but rather organize them into poetic images with contemplation value.

 

In his most recent works,images,subtitles,sounds,shots or even noises and texture of the monitor all become materials and language of a kind of "Montage writing".In this context,images become a state of life and a theme for contemplation.It also constructs a language,even if "there are only screens and dusts".

Taking a series of geometric figures for reference,Liu Yue photographs and prints a picture of a geometric object in reality,and then makes the picture another photographing target,which is adjusted to be a conceptually standard figure by perspective method in the second round of photographing.

 

In this process,however,the texture of the photo is enlarged and twisted.In this sense,Liu Yue indicates two dimensions of the image,one of which is the dimension of the target object or mental image,such as the geometric figure; the other is the “image” dimension of the signifier,such as the point texture of the printed picture.In this scientific experiment-liked process,Liu Yue also presents a kind of “Minimalism” concept of photography,which pulls photographing and observing out of the object and forms a pure domain of empirical things.

Zhou Siwei cut the images mounted on boards into various irregular shapes,and piles them up as a temporary structure; something looks like a sculpture or architecture.Images in the work are sourced from various ways,no longer containing any meaning or energy,but only a kind of decorative function,or even become leftover bits and pieces for filling up the space,just like those cut images.

 

Images seem to become rubbish nowadays due to the constant development of replication technology.Zhou Siwei,however,with forms of product photography and advertising light box,presents the image status of politics and aesthetics being exhausted in business and consumption,making the observers face with the unconscious vision in a kind of worship-liked visual ceremony.

Lin Ke's art style is a mixture of the Internet,image,screen,software,surface,body and movement.To him and many of his contemporaries,there is no longer clear distinction between the "virtual world" and the so-called "reality" in the re-definition of digital technology and Internet technology,but just a kind of nested relationship.He is both an exterior operator and a resident living inside.

 

Facing the totally mediatized world,should one treat everything in a criticizing attitude,or emerge oneself thoroughly in this unprecedented experience to explore new sensibility and new language? Lin Ke's work is undoubtedly the latter.Therefore,he softens the usual hardware-oriented principle of media art,and presents more possibilities of creation in the representational world of media surface.

Yao Shangqin names his work as " (PHOTO) graphy ",which includes but is not limited to photos as follow: a banana being rolled up in a photographic paper on which printed a banana pattern; a photo of sand covering on two legs on a beach; a piece of white paper on a dark-blue wall,half falling off,showing out its backside as if the galaxy desktop wallpaper of a Macintosh; and a photo of architectures,balled up,being placed before a bunch of buildings.

 

In these works," PHOTO " is stripped from " the skill of photo " (photography),as well as being independent from the concept of " image " to become a " photo ",in other words,a substance without distinction between object and photo.Interestingly,however,these works are displayed in the form of photos in the exhibition.The photos are presenting the part separated from themselves.

In the image,those who are being photographed show reflectively twisted facial expressions due to the sudden dazzling lights,with pupils narrowed and pores enlarged.The faces expose everything in the fierce light,including passiveness,numbness,and helplessness.Audiences are almost at the same time enduring the whole process,and experiencing the same physiological reaction,which seems that the observers are right in the place of those being watched.

 

The Portrait of 2012 ,with a composition of identity cards,or a scenario of questioning,seems like the disclosure of the power and violence of those who are watching or photographing,and the metaphor of a kind of state apparatus.In another aspect,it seems like a thrilling test of physiology and physics,in which people are unable to distinguish between naked-eye visual experience and machine vision effect.Throughout the image are politics,body and machine,which are exactly what impress the observers most about the current image society.

In 2008-2009,Zhuang Hui and Dan'er opened a photo studio in Yumen,Gansu.Yumen is the birthplace of Zhuang Hui,a resource-exhausted city,gradually becoming an abandoned land.The photo studio,called "Yumen Household",employed local residents in management,operation and photography.A large amount of photos were taken,including all kinds of certificate photos,wedding pictures,group photos,and art portraits.The studio involved in the daily life of Yumen people by a kind of image rite of public aesthetics.

 

By running a photo studio,which seems like an "ancient" career,to take photos of the faces in this city,Zhuang Hui and Dan'er explore photography—to be exact,taking photos—in a social daily scenario,and present the entire social relationship involved and constructed by photography,as well as the facts existing in the society.

When photography becomes the major method of producing images,it is also the main way for social groups to construct identity.Yang Yuanyuan's Blue Window,Two Roses is a piece of work on the public identity construction in contemporary China.It is common to see "Green-screen photography" popular in China in the recent ten years,with which Yang combines the public's popular act of taking photos in trips with their imagination of global consumerism—transnational tourism is exactly a part of global consumerism—to help people easily stand before famous sites around the world by image synthesis.And sharing these selfies of tourist place on network community is an important part of what the public imagine about the life of the middle class.

 

Of course,this is an irony.Yet more significantly,these colorful photos and selfies should not be simply considered as a kind of lowbrow imitation; there also contains a kind of subjective consciousness of intentional kitsch,self-ridicule and irony.

Jiang Ji'an worked for nearly two years in an apartment where almost every object was painted white.He drew shadows on all objects,trying to extract the renaissance light and shadow method from drawing and using it in real life.But he also created or exposed contradictions in this visual scene,such as disordered light source angle,overlapped space perception and visual order,showing a strong sense of unnaturalness in the naturalist visual concept.

 

In his painting installation,A Two Bedroom Place ,Jiang Ji'an discussed concepts and systems behind the visual presentation,namely what kind of vision was constructed,how it was constructed and in which visual order it was constructed.It was made clear in this case that before our "innocent eyes" were controlled by video technologies,it was ruled by painting.

In her work,Towards Evenings: Six Chapters ,Chen Zhe called for a possibility of Gesamtkunstwerk.Using "dusk",a moment when light and time change simultaneously,as the theme,she experimented a new form of art integrating photograph,video,installation,objects and literature.In her chapter-structured work,writing was conducted at three levels,namely words,photos,and objects,while meaning sparkled occasionally in this repeated process.

 

Chen Zhe does not see images as an existence beyond language,but consistently gives literature a nature of image and represents it in specific forms such as memos,hand-written letters and sketches on photos.Thus images are materialized such as superimposed cards.

As a photographer who engages in drawing and teaches in an animation academy,Gong Jian's photos usually only serve as a record of his life with families,friends and strangers on the street.The most important theme in his works is the "Fruit Lake",a block not far away from his apartment.

 

The contents and style of his photos define typical characteristics of the daily life in mainland cities of China,noisy,trivial,idle,enchanting,peaceful,and giving out a sense of hedonism.But rather than emphasizing the documentary value of these photos,Gong attached more importance to their essay-like colors.Therefore he added music,poetry into images,melodies and words.In this sense,photos represented their original state which was least affected by the contemporary art language.