After a one-year suspension last year, and postponed from September to November this year due to the epidemic, the 7th Shanghai Art Fair finally returned to the Shanghai Exhibition Center. Under the downturn of the Global Art Fair, after a year of stagnation and the absence of most foreign galleries, what kind of new look has the 7th Image Shanghai presented?
Judging from the composition of the gallery and the works brought by this year's image shanghai, the local advantages are very obvious. A number of emerging galleries have their own highlights, and galleries from different regions of the country have also presented a wealth of works, showing both locality and international vision.
Jiang Pengyi, "Dark Love"
1H14′16", 2013, 178 x 300cm, ShanghART Gallery
The performance of international classic photography masters and Western contemporary photography has become less, classic photographic works from Japan and South Korea have become highlights, Chinese photography and video artists such as Jiang Zhi, Wang Qingsong, Hu Jieming, Yang Yongliang and other backbone forces, to documentary humanistic photography such as Xiao Quan, Jin Yongquan's works can be seen, Young Chinese artists, even newly graduated artists also appear in the exhibition hall, the type of works and prices are very large.
We can still see two types: photographic works that are strictly photographed and processed by cameras and works of art that integrate photographic techniques and means, which may be distinguished by the vocabulary of the scholar Alexander Moxiuvi: artistic photography and photographic artistic creation. These two types of works seem to be divided differently, but for contemporary image creators, it may not be strictly divided and defined for photography, in other words, the boundaries between traditional photography and contemporary art are increasingly absent.
Yang Yongliang, "Polar Night Fireworks"
2021, Video, Tokuyudo Gallery
The three shadows + 3 gallery, which can be seen every year, highlights the latest work of the founder of the three shadows, Eiei & Inari, "I.e. Non-Kyoto No.1-1", the new work is the first time to combine the installation form and use the art micro-spray process, which may illustrate the interesting trend from documentary to concept to installation. ShanghART Gallery brings a series of works with different themes from different periods of Jiang Pengyi, giving everyone a glimpse of the artist's continuous exploration of the language of video. The artists brought by the Many-time Deok Yu Tong Gallery are artists with a certain reputation in both photography and contemporary art, such as Kandida Heffer, who inherited the Düsseldorf School, and Yang Yongliang, an artist who combined video, painting and digital post-production. ArtCN Gallery, a Shanghai gallery whose director is French, brings works by artists from different countries, the backgrounds are also very diverse, and the faces presented vary from abstract to figurative.
Eiei & Inari, "I.e. Non-Kyoto No.1-1"
2020, 60 x 75cm, Three Shadows + 3 Gallery
The addition of new first-tier or second-tier city galleries in China seems to see that video art still has great prospects in China. For example, founded in 2019, Changsha Gallery Xie Space, artists Jiang Zhi, Sun Yanchu and Huang Xiaoliang have been practicing in the field of contemporary art for many years, and their works often appear in art museum institutions and galleries. Founded in November 2019, the Distinctively Located Gaotai Contemporary Art Center is very active as the first international art center and gallery institution in Xinjiang, and although the main Xinjiang artist Ma Helen comes from fashion photography, his technique of borrowing cultural symbols to rediscover his hometown is very contemporary, and his works are also quite eye-catching.
Helen Ma, Xinjiang Fashion Guide
2020, Gaotai Center for Contemporary Art
The May Park Gallery from Chengdu brings works from documentary photographer Sebastio Salgado to Wang Qingsong, a representative of conceptual photography, while the West Gallery in Lanzhou presents artist Wang Bing's Tiexi District, who also created a series of photographs while recording the social changes in Shenyang's Tiexi District with DV. These galleries are all visiting Shanghai for the first time, and the wide range of works they present also brings the audience different expressions of video art.
Sebastian Salgado, The Last Amazon
2016, 120 x 165cm, May Park Gallery
Wang Bing, "Surviving Images--Tiexi District"
2001, 33.8 x 50.8cm, West Gallery
Founded in Beijing in 2008, focusing on Chinese contemporary artists, this time the "Focus" section solo exhibition is the "Grid" series of artists represented by Magic Stone Space, and the booth is two photographic paintings by Shi Guowei, who only did a solo exhibition at the Shanghai Center of Photography this spring - using photo painting coloring techniques, and the works of the two artists are integrated with photography and other techniques, not limited to the single concept of photography , each broadening the creation and expression of this field.
Hu Jieming 《Lattice Series -Multi-color 4#》
2020, Art Micro Spray, 180×101.15cm
At the same time, there are also many works that return to black and white film and traditional darkroom craftsmanship, seeing the return of a certain photographic belief, and also presenting the re-excavation of traditional photographic craftsmanship. Chen Jiayi's "Wind and Objects Traveling Heart" series brought by Bikedun Gallery seems to see the influence of Japanese photographer Kazumasa Suda. HdM Gallery's latest series, "The Dust Sucked In Now Was Once a House," is a combination of darkroom craftsmanship created by artists after the epidemic. Hu Weiyi mentioned that "traditional photography is based on the chemical reaction of matter, and there can be many opportunities to intervene in the reaction, which is more likely than digital", and the artist took acid to rinse the film in a previous project, which is an artistic act that intervenes in traditional craftsmanship.
Chen Jiayi, "Wind and Creatures Traveling in the Heart 001"
2021, 72 x 72cm, Horton Gallery
Hu Weiyi, "The Dust Sucked In Now Was Once a House No.33"
2021，138 x 92cm，HdM Gallery
If the photography of the above works can be used as a means of conceptual expression, there are a number of artists who have completely adopted technical means to generate images, such as Google Maps screenshots, drone shooting, etc., or new technological methods such as 3D scanning and computer mapping, and this series of new image generation technologies have been used by artists to reflect, question or imagine the future world. In the exhibition "Tuhui Future", an insight section curated by He Yining, we can see the subversion of the relationship between "photography expressing reality", such as Zhang Wenxin, who once underwent strict training under the guidance of Magnum photographers, and chose to use a variety of media to present the subjective real world, rather than using traditional photography to freeze the objective world. For the artist, depicting the objective other is no longer an effective method, and doubts about the authenticity of the image also lead her to the direction of contemporary video art.
Zhang Wenxin, "Philadelphia Refinery"
2016, Collector's Grade Digital Microspray, 80 x 65cm, courtesy of the artist
After walking around, the most surprising thing is to see the emergence of incredibly young emerging galleries and artists, representing the appearance of art practitioners with an international perspective and a flexible and dynamic trend in the post-epidemic era. For example, the gallery that was just established this year, in fact, the manager has created an art brand that focuses on art printmaking in 2018, and slowly began to expand the art type of the agent, carry out cooperation projects, do offline exhibitions, and this summer in an old bungalow in Shanghai after doing a double solo exhibition of artists Wang Jian and Sun Haiting, decided to set up a gallery, the name continues the exhibition name "for a while", which is in line with her playful and hot-blooded personality, and also shows the changeable and flexible operation of this gallery. Although there is no fixed gallery space, the founder feels that this is not an obstacle, "today people's understanding of galleries is different, not necessarily physical space, more about the comprehensive level and the presentation of works and curatorial presentations."
Sun Haiting, "The Empty Room"
2009-2011, One Time Gallery
Scott Gray, founder of the Video Art Fair, believes that from the previous development and sales, there is still a huge prospect for the collection of images. According to the South China Morning Post reported in the early years, in 2017 China was already the world's second largest art market, but art photography transactions accounted for only 1.2%, today "The Chinese art market is currently the most active in the world" collector Andrew Ruff observed that the generally low price of photography has no reason not to have advantages and long-term potential in middle-class consumption, this because of the epidemic reasons the deserted situation on the scene may not explain anything, The active and hard work of practitioners will promote the development and market performance of video art in the long run.
Wen | brother-
Edited | Shi Yi
Image from Image Shanghai