4 : P h o t o G r o u p S h o w

2008-06-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

June 21st at 3:00 pm
CAAC Gallery 456
456 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10013
Direction >>>

RSVP strongly recommended
4photoshow[at]gmail.com

2008-04-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

May 16th - June 21st, 2008
Opening: Friday, May 16th, 2008
6:00 - 8:00 pm

CAAC Gallery 456
456 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10013
Direction >>>
Tel: 212.431.9740
info [at] caacarts.org
Hour: M - F, Noon to 6:00 pm

WANG Yiqun : My Beauty

2008-04-27T22:26:00.001-07:00

B4 2008 20"x25" Two Diptychs C-Print 1/6

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C2 2008
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U4 2007
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"... Turn back and the shore is at hand. Both shores are now the same thing.
"... Whether you turn back or not is one thing. Whether you 'can' turn back or not is another thing. Whether you turn back or not is the same thing."
- Wang Yiqun

WANG YIQUN

Born in 1962 in Shanghai, China. Lives and freelances in New York City.

- Photography Exhibitions

2008 Goodnight, My Beauty, Two solos, Osage Gallery, Shanghai
1999 The Trio, Group Show, Gallery Invisible, Shanghai

- TV Programs

2007 Trash 9’, Documentary
2006 The Theatre 15’, Documentary
2005 The Walls 20’×4, Video Installation
2001 Ma XiaoBing’s Nap 43’, Drama; Nominated for Independent Film Festival of China
2001 Red Flower 5'52, MTV; Sponsored by Australian Tourism Victoria
2000 Y2K 60’, Documentary; Nominee, HK Arts Festival, Video Show

- Film Productions

1999 Community Ad “The Ugliest Gesticulation”; Nominee of New York Advertising Festival
1998 Episode: “Spring Glow”; Nominee of Longyin Review, Hong Kong
1996 Episode: “The Door God”; Nominee of Longyin Review, Hong Kong; The One Show (“Asia Today” Advertising Program in Taiwan)

More work: tanksolo.myjalbum.net/MyBeauty
tanksolo@hotmail.com

ZHENG Yaohua : On Their Sites

2008-04-27T22:04:00.001-07:00

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This project is to make a photographic book, constituted with cityscapes and still lives accompanied with their re-spective texts.

I believe that some inconsiderable personal memories tingle people more frequently than significant historical events do. I also believe that most people’s lives appear completely uneventful to others. At the end of 2006, after reading for the second time Joel Sternfeld’s One This Site, a book juxtaposing landscape photos with brief texts about a series of tragic events in American collective memory, I decided to make a book for another type of memories. I started photographing the sites where some private memories were attached and recording memories that might be meaningful only to their owners.

ots02.456 24"x30" C-print 1/6

This ongoing project has brought me such insights: for the consciousness of having anchored, one tends to establish mutual recognition and confirmation with where he/she lives, chronically or momentarily, by attaching one’s memories to specific sites or objects. An intersection, mailbox or tiny thorn therefore becomes his/her vessel of private memory or stele of personal history. I was amazed by some details when photographing for this growing collection, and finally convinced that they are the irrefutable ratification to the memory owners.

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To simulate the uneventful look of life, I waited sunny days to photograph on the sites where various intimate memories interspersed, hoping to avoid masking the images with the mawkish photographic expressions of a know-all. As one of the results, the sundrenched images contrive into a world of lucid dreams. However, I can not tell whom the dreams belong to.

Zheng Yaohua
March 15, 2008
Translated from Chinese by SUN Yunfan

ZHENG YAOHUA

was born in Shanghai, China in 1962. He studied Chinese language at Shanghai Normal University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1985. He has been working and living in New York City since 2003. Zheng’s work has been focused on the city; however, he has never considered this limitation to be negative.

2005, one year after his arrival, four of Zheng’s photographs of Brooklyn were selected to be included in a photo book 28 MM: OFFLINE. In 2006, he was awarded first place honor in QMA Seven Train Photo Contest hosted by the Queens Museum of Art. In November 2007, five sets of photographs selected from the project On Their Sites were showed for the first time in a co-exhibition Intimate Distance.

Zheng Yaohua has been fascinated with the ordinary side of common things. His contemplation has sparked this ongoing project On Their Sites.

More work: zeyez.net
zeyezeyez@hotmail.com

2008-04-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

施瀚涛

别扭的焦虑

[English Version]

这里展出的四位摄影师都来自中国大陆。王依群和郑耀华出生于60年代的上海，是中国改革开放后第一批先锋影像工作者，移居美国后独立从事艺术创作。张碔和缪佳欣是70年代生人，前者17岁移民美国，成长于唐人街，常年用摄影手段记录对陌生城市的体验；后者是新生代中国摄影家的代表，2年前移居美国，以更加激进的姿态投入观念摄影的创作。本次展览，四个人的作品都创作于纽约。

在张碔的作品中我们可以看到一些日常生活中熟悉的情景和面孔；作者在一些普通的天气下选取了一些普通的人和场景，画面中没有激动人心的情节，或者摄人心魄的光影效果，而被摄者大多表情木纳或疲倦；摄影师采用了端正而划一的视角，略有一些仰拍；在接连几张作品的铺陈中，营造的却是异常沉闷的气氛；如我们的生活一般波澜不惊。张碔在邮件中告诉我他的这组“肖像”最早开始于一份为时尚杂志拍摄的计划，而在拍摄的过程中却找到了“街头”的感觉；这听起来是个有趣的经历，其中似乎也暗示着一种悖谬。显然“时尚”是今天社会世俗审美的巅峰，而“街头”是摄影介入并批判社会最直接的态度和方式；在街头做时尚摄影的不止一个两个，但大多还是为了“时尚”；张告诉我们的却是在对“时尚”的捕捉和审视中，激发了他另外一种“进入”社会的欲望。那么到底是什么东西藏在这些瞬间之中从而激发了作者“街头”的灵感呢？也许正是上面我们提到的那种沉闷？在那张抓拍到的四个人的合影以及两个年轻人的肖像的并置中，除了穿着上年轻人的“时尚”与老年人的“陈旧”之外，我们竟然很难发现两者在精神气质上的任何不同，这是有点让人难过的。

在今天世俗化了的世界中，消费主义已经取代了宗教理想和政治意识形态成为人们在现代社会精神生活中的依据；由巴黎、米兰、纽约、荷里活等“时尚之都”所联成一体的影视、服装、奢侈品、媒体等全球化的“时尚”产业链正是这个消费主义的核心。康德提出“美是道德的象征”，那么这个以全球化的生产和消费为基础的审美经验，又（能）为我们在“道德”和“精神”层面带来什么呢？张的“沉闷”的“时尚”人像也许可算是一种不太乐观的答案。
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与张的小视角的个体描摹的方式不同，缪佳欣呈现在我们面前的是一个更具悲剧性的宏大叙事的场面。他镜头中的曼哈顿没有了白天的人声鼎沸光鲜夺目，只有演出落幕之后的杂乱、肮脏与荒凉。常有诗歌描述卸妆的女人，以找寻美丽的本质或是假面背后的真实；但对于曼哈顿我们却不能断定，白天或夜晚，哪一面才是它的真实。而进一步刺激着观众的是那个匍匐在城市垃圾堆中的人体，他像是战争过后被弃于荒野的尸体，惊心动魄却理所当然；就好像我们会痛心于人类尊严的失落，却又已安然接受了持续生产着这种“失落”的秩序；那个人体安静地躺在画面的一角，就像曼哈顿故事中天然就该存在的角色。

在与城市相关的主题上，缪已经有了十多年的摄影探索的经历，结合他过去的作品，我们还可以在这个系列中发现摄影师与城市的关系所开始发生的变化。比如在他经典的Under Construction的街头系列以及“夜游症”中，我们看到缪用镜头直接对准着城市里的各种人和事，他做着最直接的描摹和审判，他以鲜明的强者的姿态出现在他和他的城市，以及城市中的人的关系中；而到了纽约之后，我们几乎没再看到过这样以自我为中心的审判式的摄影。当然这是合理的，在纽约这个新的环境中，他失去了去做审判的依据和自信，但没想到的是这一次他却用自己弱小的身体与他背后的这个庞大的城市建立起了一种新的极端的对峙关系，他安然地充当了这场对峙中的牺牲者，因为也许只有牺牲才有可能不被对手那吞噬着一切的浪潮所卷走，即便最终自己照样被抛在了没有人的沙滩。

另外补充两点，第一，尽管缪的作品是在来了纽约才开始创作的，但他的指向却不具有这种局限性；在雪地里，环绕着他身体周围的是和外滩一样的现代主义建筑群，远处也是和浦东一样的后现代主义的玻璃幕墙。缪所提出的是一个超越“身份”或政治之上的命题，画面中那个人显然是倒在了自己所创造出来的城市里面；他构成了对以城市为代表的一种普遍的现代性的质疑和拒绝，或者我们可以说那个人的对面是他自己所创造的文明。第二，缪的这组关于对抗的作品同时也是有漏洞的；作者的身体是雪白而纤细的，那是一个典型的city boy的身体，他在那些垃圾堆和雪堆中显得夺目；这又提醒着我们不由地怀疑起他对抗的有效性；因为他所对抗的不仅是一个他所创造的城市，同时也是创造了他的城市，他早就和城市合而为一，他又怎么可能跳出城市（也就是他自己），而那份抵抗又从何说起？
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与缪佳欣夜晚的、戏剧性的、具有激进对抗精神的画面相比，郑耀华的画面只是在明晃晃阳光下的平铺直叙，所伴随的文字也显得琐碎而个人。郑说他的这组作品是模仿Joel Sternfeld的On This Site而有针对性地做的，但显然这两个项目有本质的不同。Sternfeld的故事讲述的是关于灾难的、群体的记忆，而郑所讲述的是关于日常的、个体的记忆。前者在人们心中有明确的意义指向，并被作为历史的片断而存在；而后者是私人的，只对个体有效。郑在项目中所做的正是努力地把个体的记忆以我们习惯的群体历史的叙述方式去挽留或提升，其结果当然是向我们揭示了个体记忆的“可靠性”和“有效性”的失败。

我们发现在Sternfeld那里意义是先于现实而存在的，即观众在看到这些画面之前，就知道这个世界上存在着一系列具有特殊意义的事件或者我们称之为历史的东西，作者只是带领观众找到了那个地方；而当我们来到这些“历史遗迹”之前，一切平淡无奇，历史并不在风景中，它是可以脱离现实而抽象存在的。而在郑的项目中，个体记忆却必须依赖现实而存在，正如作者说“记忆像花粉一样粘贴于物体之上”；可矛盾的是，记忆代表着人们关于“永恒”的一种终极理想，而物体却代表着易腐的、暂时的，我们如何期待前者依赖与后者而存在呢？这也许正是“个体记忆作为历史”之不成立的根本原因吧。在Emily Kwong的故事中，作者更描述了一个“遗失了珠子”的具有逻辑悖论的记忆：即如果找到珠子了，我好像找到了记忆的证据和事件意义的载体，但同时这违反了关于“遗失”的命题；而如果我不能找到珠子的话，这显然符合我关于遗失的记忆；但没有珠子又怎么证明曾经“遗失了珠子”的记忆呢？这更进一步证实着个体记忆的不可靠。

更进一步的是，即便作者在这个项目中一再明确地指出一些在个人事件中的核心物件，以此来保证事件（记忆）的可靠和意义的确凿，然而正像作者在他的视觉叙述中所处理的那样，那些核心的物件，如一个邮箱、一段街沿或者一个垃圾桶等等，只在画面中占据着不起眼的小小的一点，甚至几乎被挤出画面。这就像一个孩子执着却无力的争辩，他们也常常会指出一些成年人所忽视的微小的细节，将此作为自己的证据；但在成人面前，那样的证据是无意义的，那样的争辩也是无效的；所以最后我们发现这根本不是证据本身的问题，而是成人的话语权保证了他在争论开始的时候已经胜券在握了。这也许就是为什么郑的故事中的个体经验永远不会具有Sternfeld故事中的那些历史意义，那本来就是两个话语系统的竞争。

由上所述，我们不得不承认个体意义的脆弱，它们随时可能就淹没在群体的话语中；而人们好像也已习惯了这种个体和群体的关系，就像许多观众是不能理解作者为什么要用如此严肃的方式去记录一个“毫无意义”的，甚至也是“毫无美感”的场景。当然这也同时提醒着我们摄影在参与“意义”建设方面的“天赋”。
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比较上述三位作者对一些现代社会话题的涉足，王依群的作品似乎完全是一种纯美学的表现，他首先就为我们创造了一种超现实主义的视觉体验；而同时“没有脸的美人”又提出了一个挑战人们常识的逻辑圈套，没有脸你怎么知道她是美人？他关于这组作品的阐述是：“回不回头是一回事；回不回得了头是一回事；回头和不回头是一回事。意愿是一回事，能不能是又一回事，但事实上回和不回是一回事。”这像是一段来自远古的偈语。可让读者感到别扭的是，从“意愿”和“能力”作者明明承认了可能，而到了本该出现一个预料之中的结果时，我们却被告知不可能。没有后头哪来回头；没有回头哪来前头？充满了一种逻辑上的“暴力感”。而这种抽象的暴力感到了画面中就表现为那些“没有脸的美人”；就好像我们满怀喜悦地奔向那个美人背影，美人回头却依然是一束黑发。而更可怕的是，摄影的最为细致的刻画能力在这个绝望的瞬间显得尤为醒目。

然而王的创作初衷显然并不仅仅停留在这么一种逻辑和美学的互动游戏之中；作者在游戏中所传递出的那种在逻辑上别扭或者突然断裂的感受同时也契合着现代人的一种普遍经验，即人们发现世界并非牢牢控制在人类“有计划的社会发展”的进程之中，我们常常在一片欢欣鼓舞的同时一样地感到无所适从，人类社会在科学与理性的指引下却也一次又一次地被带向绝境：两次世界大战、种族屠杀、贫富差距、环境污染、现代极权主义等等现代文明的耻辱纪录。在卡夫卡的《变形记》或者Paul Klee的《天使》中我们都可以找到那种熟悉的绝望或者迷茫的感受。从这个意义上看，作者的“回头”当然是对佛教中“苦海无边，回头是岸”的最直接运用，这与本雅明从西方神学中借来的“弥赛亚”降临的理想，或者对“救赎”和“自我救赎”的呼唤是一致的。

我无意在此继续展开这个巨大的话题；但此时当我们再回过头去看张碔的街头肖像在审美和道德方面的延伸，缪佳欣的行为和作品中他与城市乃至整个现代性的对峙，郑耀华的图文中所看到的群体历史对个体意义剥夺的可能性，他们无不是那种现代性焦虑的一个侧面的表现；只是到了王依群这里，他剥离了所有的社会意义，而将那种焦虑放在了一个纯美学的语境中和观众们开了一个让人别扭的玩笑。
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2008-04-26T11:29:00.001-07:00

SHI Hantao

Discomforting Anxieties

English Translation by SHI Yaohua

[中文版 Chinese Version]

All four photographers in this exhibition are from Mainland China. Born in Shanghai in the 1960s, Wang Yiqun and Zheng Yaohua were among the first avant-garde photographers and video artists after the country opened up. After immigrating to the U.S., both became independent artists. Miao Jiaxin and Zhang Wu were born in the 1970s. Zhang moved to America at seventeen and grew up in New York’s Chinatown. Soon after he came to the Big Apple, Zhang began to record on camera his impressions and experiences in an unfamiliar city. Miao belongs to the new generation of Chinese photographers. Since arriving in the U.S. two years ago, he has thrown himself into even more radical conceptual photography. All the works in this exhibition were completed in New York.

In Zhang’s work we come across scenes and faces recognizable from daily life. The photographer chose ordinary people and scenes under ordinary weather conditions. There are no sensational narratives or dazzling effects of chiaroscuro. Indeed, many of the subjects’ faces exhibit little emotion except perhaps fatigue. The photographer repeatedly chose the same angles with only a few tilted shots, thus creating a monotonous mood in several of his series, befitting quotidian life itself. In an email Zhang Wu told me that this group of “portraits” was initially intended as a fashion layout for a style magazine, but during the shoot he seemed to have captured the “street”. This interesting evolution seems to hint at a paradox. Fashion is undoubtedly the epitome of popular esthetics whereas the street provides the most immediate avenue not only to engage but also to be critical of society. Many have gone to the street for fashion photography, but in the end for most it is more about fashion than photography. What emerges from Zhang’s work is a different kind of desire to penetrate society. Fashion photography becomes a catalyst. What then about those moments of capturing and scrutinizing style that so inspired the photographer? Perhaps the boredom previously alluded to? In the juxtaposition of a snapshot of three elderly people and a small boy and portraits of a young man and a young woman, there is little to distinguish the subjects except for the modish and outmoded clothes on the young and old people respectively—a depressing thought.

In today’s secularized world consumerism has replaced religious ideals and political ideology as the raison d’être of people’s lives. The industries spawned by the fashion capitals of Paris, Milan, New York, and Hollywood—TV and film, clothing, luxury products, the media—are at the core of this consumerism. Kant asserts that beauty is a symbol of morality. If that is the case, what could the esthetic experience based on global production and consumption bring to our “moral” and “spiritual” planes? Zhang’s “dull fashion” could be viewed as a less than upbeat answer.
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In contrast to Zhang’s micro points of view and individual portraitures, Miao presents us with grand narratives with tragic overtones. The Manhattan seen through his lens is no longer daytime’s teeming humanity and dazzling brilliance but the chaos, filth, and desolation after the curtain falls at the end of a show at night. Poets write about women after their makeup has come off in order to get at the essence of beauty or the truth behind the masks, but with Miao’s Manhattan we are not sure which side is more real, the city during the day or at night. Even more provocative to the viewer is the body crawling through the city’s trash heap like a corpse abandoned after a war on a deserted battlefield, shocking yet not unexpected, just as we lament the loss of human dignity but accept the order which perpetuates this loss. The body lies peacefully in a corner of the photograph like a character destined to be in a Manhattan story.

Miao has been exploring urban themes for over a decade. Compared with his past work, we notice a change in the photographer’s relationship with the city in this new series. Take his classic Under Construction or his Sleepwalking series for example. We see Miao training his camera squarely on a diverse array of people and events, judging them even as he records them on film, placing himself in a clear position of strength both toward the city, and toward its people and their relationships. After his arrival in New York, we no longer find the same self-centered judgmental photography, which is to be expected. In the new environment of New York, he has lost the basis and confidence to judge. What is unexpected is a new drastic confrontation that he has constructed between his fragile body and the immense city around him. He placidly assumes the role of victim in this confrontation, perhaps because only by being a victim could he escape being swept away by his opponent’s tidal wave, even though he might still end up being left behind on a deserted beach.

Two additional observations, first, although Miao’s works began after he arrived in New York, his references are not circumscribed by it. Surrounding his collapsed body in the snow are the Art Deco or Art Moderne buildings reminiscent of Shanghai’s Bund area. In the distance are the same kinds of postmodernist glass curtain walls as one finds in Pudong, Shanghai’s brand new financial district across the Huangpu River opposite the Bund. Miao’s theme transcends identity and politics. The person in the photograph clearly has tripped in a city that he created himself, questioning and rejecting the universalized modernity it represents. Or we could say that person is confronting the civilization that he has created. Secondly, there are holes in this series about confrontation. The artist’s body is snow white and delicate, clearly the body of a typical “city boy”. He dazzles in the garbage dump and in the snow, which leads us to question the effectiveness of his confrontation, since what he is confronting is not only a city that he has created himself but also a city that has created him. The two are inseparable. How can he take himself outside the city, i.e., outside of himself, and speak of confrontation?
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Contrasted with Miao Jiaxin’s nocturnal and dramatically confrontational images, Zheng Yaohua’s bright daytime photographs seem straightforward indeed. Their captions also seem overly detailed and personal. According to Zheng, his series pointedly imitates Joel Sternfeld’s On this Site, yet clearly the two projects are fundamentally different. Sternfeld’s narratives have to do with collective memory of catastrophic events. Zheng, on the other hand, deals with personal memory of mundane life. The former have clear references in viewers’ minds and exist as fragments of history. The latter are private and effective only in personal terms. In this series, Zheng endeavors to use narrative strategies which we customarily associate with collective history in order to preserve or elevate personal memory. The result is naturally to reveal its unreliability and ineffectiveness.

We find that in Sternfeld’s works meaning is a priori. That is to say, the viewer knows that there existed in the world a series of significant events, which we call history, before even seeing his images. The artist merely serves as a tour guide. When we arrive at these “historic sites”, everything seems bland and unremarkable, History does not reside in the landscape. It can exist independent of reality. In Zheng’s project, however, personal memory is dependent on reality, as the photographer puts it, “like pollen stuck to objects.” What is paradoxical is that while memory represents people’s ultimate ideal of eternity, physical objects are perishable and transient. How could we expect the former to depend on the latter? Perhaps that is the fundamental reason why personal memory as history cannot exist? In the story of Emily Kwong, the photographer even tells a paradoxical story of “a lost pearl”. If the pearl is found, it might seem that one has found the evidence for the validity of one’s memory and carrier of the significance of the event, but by the same token, the pearl would no longer be lost. If one fails to find the pearl, even though this might confirm one’s memory of loss, without the pearl how could one prove one has lost the pearl? Which goes to show the unreliability of individual memory?

To push the argument even further, one might say that even if the photographer points insistently to some of the core objects in his personal life in order to assure us of the truthfulness of the events or memories and the clarity of their meaning, these core objects—a mailbox, a street front, a trash can, etc.—appear insignificant in the images. In fact, they are almost squeezed out of the frames. This is like the stubborn but futile argument of a child, who points out some details that have been ignored by adults as proof for his case. For adults, however, this kind of proof is meaningless and invalid. In the end we realize that the problem does not lie with the evidence. Adults’ discursive hegemony determines that the argument is over before it begins. Perhaps that is why the personal experiences in Zheng’s narratives can never have the historical significance of Sternfeld’s. It all boils down to two competing discursive systems.

From the above we have to admit the fragility of personal meaning, which can be submerged at any moment in collective discourses. People are somehow accustomed to this relationship between the individual and the collective. Many viewers may wonder why the photographer so meticulously documents “trivial” scenes that are without any “esthetic appeal”, which of course reminds us of the given of photography’s role in constructing meaning.
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Beside the socially engaged works of the other photographers, Wang Yiqun’s images seem pure esthetic exercises. First of all, he provides us with a surrealist visual experience. At the same time Faceless Beauty proposes a logical dilemma that challenges the viewer’s common sense. Without a face how could one tell that the woman is a beauty? On his Blog the photographer writes of this group of works: “Whether you turn back or not is one thing. Whether you can turn back or not is another thing. Whether you turn back or not is the same thing.” With the first two statements, the author seems to intimate that one can choose in terms of will and capability. With the last statement, however, that capability turns out to be illusory after all. This sounds like an ancient conundrum. What makes the viewer feel uneasy is the logical violence here. Faceless Beauty is the visual manifestation of this abstract violence. It is as if one expectantly rushes toward a beautiful woman’s back only to see a head covered with black hair as she turns her face around. What is even more frightening is the fact that the photographer’s exquisite ability of representation is nowhere more apparent than at this despairing moment.

However, Wang’s original creative impulse was obviously not to stop at this kind of interactive game between logic and esthetics. The awkwardness or sudden rupture of logic conveyed in the game conforms to our common experience in the modern age. That is to say, we find that the world is not really within the firm grasp of our “planned social evolution”. Even as we rejoice, we do not always know which direction to turn next. Science and reason have time and again led humankind to the brink of catastrophe—the shameful record of modern civilization, the two world wars, genocide, the gap between rich and poor, environmental pollution, modern totalitarianism, etc. We find in Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Paul Klee’s Angels the same familiar sense of despair and bewilderment. On this level, the author’s turning of the back is of course a direct quote of the Buddhist sutra, “The sea of bitterness is vast, Turn back and the shore is at hand.” and consistent with Walter Benjamin’s coming of the Messiah from western theology and appeal to redemption and self-redemption.

These are obviously weighty subjects and must await another, more opportune, occasion for further discussion, but if we take a moment to look back at the extension of Zhang Wu’s subject matter to esthetics and ethics, Miao Jiaxin’s performance work and his confrontation with the city and modernity itself, and the possibility of collective history expropriating personal meaning in Zheng Yaohua’s works, we realize that they are manifestations of our anxieties vis-à-vis modernity. With Wang Yiqun, all social significance has been stripped away and the anxieties displaced into an esthetic context. The photographer has played a discomforting joke on the viewer.
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SHI Hantao
BS, 1996, Shanghai Normal University; MA, 2008, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 2002-2003, founder and director of the Origin Gallery, Shanghai; 2003-2006, director of epSITE (EPSON Image Gallery), Shanghai. In 2005 he was awarded as the Best Curator of the Year in the 1st Lianzhou International Photo Festival, Guangdong, China. He has organized and curated more than 30 exhibitions of Chinese contemporary photography; and his photo essays have also been widely published in Chinese.

SHI Yaohua
teaches Chinese language and culture at Wake Forest University.

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ZHANG Wu : Untitled

2008-04-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

18"x18" C-print

ZHANG WU

born 1977 in Fuzhou, China, presently works and lives in New York. He has been working and living in New York City since 1994. He studied Media at Hunter College where he received his Bachelor’s degree. Zhang’s work has been focused on the people, and city landscapes. In 2007, he joined a group exhibition in G+ Gallery, Toronto, Canada, and publishes his works in several Magazines such as Kaila and Digital Photography in China.

More work: tenth.blogbus.com
happyier@hotmail.com

MIAO Jiaxin : Good Night, New York

2008-04-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

0211-45in 36"x45" C-print 1/8

0908-45in
36"x45" C-print
1/8

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36"x45" C-print
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"In the Winter of 2007 I set out to create these self-portraits by blending my body into the streets of NYC."
- Miao Jiaxin

MIAO JIAXIN

Born 1977 in Shanghai, presently works and lives in New York.

- Solo Exhibition

2003 "On the Way to Jonah’s" Origin Gallery, Shanghai, China

- Group Exhibitions

2008 Goodnight, My Beauty, Two solos, Osage Gallery, Shanghai, China

2007 "Shanghai Superimposed" Time zone 8 Editions, 798 Factory, Beijing, China

2006 Moscow Photo Biennial, Moscow, Russia
2006 "Restless Photography and New Media" Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China

2005 Lianzhou International Photo Festival, Lianzhou City, Guangdong, China
2005 "Harvest": Chinese Contemporary Photography Art Scene Gallery, Shanghai, China
2005 "Salute to Daido Moriyama": 5 New Generation Photographers EP Site Gallery, Shanghai, China
2005 "Selfhood. Absent Minded": New Generation Photographers in China, Guangzhou, China

2004 "Humanism" Museum of Art, Shanghai, China
2004 "Humanism" Museum of Art, Guangdong, China

2003 Ping Yao International Photography Festival, Shanghai, China

2001 "Ma Xiao Bing's Nap" 2001 Chinese Independent Film Festival, China

More work: miaojiaxin.com
jaximiao@hotmail.com