Shanghai based gallery m97 presents 3 photographers dealing with the recent social and geopolitical developments in China  in their particular point of view, while Berlin gallery Alexander Ochs + White Space Beijing show the latest work “Index” by Miao Xiachun in their new rooms in Beijing. Xiaochun is famous for his large scale photographs, realized with the help of digital technology.

Installation view m97 Gallery © m97 Gallery

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3 Solo Exhibitions ｜ 三个个展

Li Jun: “Impermanent Instant”
Yang Yi: “Uprooted”
Meng Jin & Fang Er: “Love Hotel”

m97 Gallery, Shanghai

September 5 – October 31, 2009

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Li Jun: “Impermanent Instant”

Quoted from PR-Text: In Buddhism, the fundamental concept of  “impermanence” teaches that all living and non-living objects are in an unrelenting constant state of change. Time, existence, and consciousness itself are nothing more than a series of eternally changing impermanent instants.

For the unprecedented frenzy of development that is modern China there is perhaps no more fitting a metaphor than dust. It’s a sign of the old world and a sign of the new world. A sign of the ubiquitous concrete high-rise block and cavernous construction site. A sign of the demolished lanes and dwellings of ancient architecture, as well as a sign of pollution and an insatiable industrial appetite. In China, dust is the ever-looming particulate by-product of the physical metamorphosis that envelops the entire country and its people.

For photography artist Li Jun, the phenomenon of dust that envelops the simple objects and possessions of his Chengdu apartment and the haunting traces the objects leave offers poetic empirical proof of his and their temporary impermanent existence, however ephemeral, amidst tumultuous

YANG YI: "Uprooted #12: Old Town of Kaixian, The Ring Road" (2007) C-Print. 100cm x 70cm, Edition of 12; 150cm x 105cm - Edition of 6. © YANG Yi. Courtesy of m97 Gallery.

Yang Yi: “Uprooted”

Yang Yi photographed his childhood hometown which has been flooded by the Three Gorges Dam, damming the  Yangtze River in the Hubei province of China. The controversial project is the world’s largest engineering and construction site, which has displaced over 1.24 million people and destroyed several cities as well as archeological and cultural sites.

In the sepia-colored works, Yang Yi documented his hometown before being flodded and conceptually immerses the residents under water. A reverie of human life still persisting in this submerged, quiet town that inevitably has now been washed away.

MENG JIN + FANG ER: "Hotel 69" (2008-09) C-Print. 90cm x 90cm, Edition of 8; 150cm x 150cm, Edition of 10. © MENG Jin + FANG Er. Courtesy of m97 Gallery.

Meng Jin & Fang Er: “Love Hotel”

Quoted from PR-Text: Partners Meng Jin and Fang Er’s first collaborative photography project, “Love Hotel” explores the two artists’ ongoing interest in urban life, architecture, memory and found objects, and the inter-relationship between physical buildings, objects and their social context. The couple worked on-site within the framework of 3-hour ‘rest’ periods in various ‘short-stay’ hotels creating improvised, spontaneous sculpture works with the existing objects found in the rented love hotel rooms. Slightly amorphous structures, the rearranged inanimate objects hint at entangled anthropomorphic creations in this fantasy space devoid of actual human presence.

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Miao Xiaochun: Index

ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BEIJING + WHITE SPACE BEIJING
September 7th – November 7th , 2009

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Miao Xiaochun, R17 09.4.11, 2009 Digital print, 25 x 95 cm and 42 x 160 cm © M. Xiaochun, A.O.Galleries

Artist Statement/PR-Text: “We all give priority to the ‘objectivity’ of photographs; however, everyone makes a subjective choice prior to shooting. We choose the theme, the location, the time of shooting, the aperture and the shutter speed; we decide on the people and objects entering the frame. If we really don’t know what to shoot, we can shoot first and select later or we can ask someone else to choose for us. [...]

Therefore, I use a Seitz Roundshot-Camera for the Beijing Index. This way, I don’t have to choose the shooting angle, since it is a 360 degree anyway, with all angles included. I took a map of Beijing and draw longitudes and latitudes of equal distance. The crossing points of those lines define the shooting locations. It does not matter if those locations are important and interesting or not. I set up the camera and took a photograph in order to shoot something that’s not planned. I just wanted to shoot more and more. [...]“

Passend zum “open weekend” der Berliner Galerien zeigt die Galerie Degenhartt in Berlin Mitte ihre neue Ausstellung:

Nicola Meitzner, aus shanghai builder, inkjet-prints, 2008 © N. Meitzner

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Nicola Meitzner

City Code

Fotografien

1. Mai bis 13. Juni 2009

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Gezeigt werden die neuesten Arbeiten der in Zürich lebenden Fotografin Nicola Meitzner (*1969), die das Leben in Metropolen zum Thema ihrer präzise beobachteten Arbeiten macht. In Schwarzweiß- und Farbfotografien spürt sie den Besonderheiten der verschiedenen Orte nach – zwar gleichen sich die Städte im Zuge der Globalisierung immer mehr einander an, dennoch ist jede Stadt durch unterschiedliche örtliche Gegebenheiten, verschieden schnelles Wachstum und politische Verhältnisse deutlich ausgeprägt.

Nicola Meitzner,

aus luckyland, 2005, c-print, 2005, 30 x 40 cm © N. Meitzner

(aus den Infos der Galerie:)

In der 15-teiligen, farbig fotografierten Arbeit luckyland (2005) fängt Nicola Meitzner das Leben und Treiben in Sportstätten in Sydney ein. Hier kommen Gegensatzpaare wie Spiel und Künstlichkeit, Freiheit und Begrenzung, Freizeit und Alltag zum Ausdruck. Die sommerlichen Szenen von Pferderennen, Regatten oder Skateboarding zeigen eine bis zur Modellhaftigkeit künstlich erscheinende Kulisse, vor der die Freizeitbeschäftigung weitestgehend reglementiert stattfindet.

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Erstmals in einer Galerie ausgestellt wird die Arbeit Shanghai Builder (2007/08), die Elemente der Stadt wie Verkehrswege, Gebäude, Grün und ihre Bewohner gleichsam mit dem Seziermesser in Einzelteile zerlegt. Die 94-teilige Arbeit, deren Bruchstücke auf den ersten Blick zufällig wirken, nimmt mit einer Länge von über 8 Metern zwei Wände des Galerieraums ein. Der Betrachter ist gefordert, die fast abstrakt wirkenden Teile selbst zu ordnen und zu einer eigenen Stadtwahrnehmung zusammenzufügen. In der ungewöhnlichen räumlichen Präsentation wird die Dynamik des städtischen Lebens unmittelbar erfahrbar.

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Nicola Meitzners neueste, in Hongkong fotografierte Serie Synergy (2008/09) thematisiert den Dreiklang Mensch – Urbanität – Natur. Die sieben Fotografien dieser Arbeit zeigen einen fragmentierten städtischen Kontext, welcher der Unübersichtlichkeit und Kleinteiligkeit unserer Alltagswahrnehmung entspricht. Die Fotos wirken collagenhaft bis zur Unwirklichkeit, ganz wie unser von Technik, zwanghaftem Fortschritt und Medien geprägtes Leben selbst.

The Easter Holidays are definitely over, let’s get back to work!

For those of you who happen to travel far east, you might want to see a double photo exhibition in Shanghai:

m97 Gallery Shanghai presents the work of Lu Jun and Sun Ji (*1981).

Especially interesting for the architectural point of view is the latter, Shanghai-based artist Sun Ji’s “Memory City”. Yet both artists comment on the urban developments in Shanghai/China more or less obviously.

m97 Gallery is one of the first galleries in Shanghai dedicated to exhibiting contemporary and fine art photography. They want to present ” the most interesting and innovative photography work in China, across all genres of the medium.”

Sun Ji, Memory City II, #2, 2008

Sun Ji, Memory City I, #2, 2005

“The works in Sun Ji’s “Memory City” are architectural collages that speak of urban transformation as destruction and displacement of the old must make way for the new; memories recreated that are both meant to be forgotten and remembered. In his first body of work “Memory City I”, Sun Ji uses his camera to create hyperrealist collages of industrial landscapes, factory facades, water towers, smoke stacks and abandoned buildings that result in works of striking scale and formality. Recreating impressions and memories from his childhood, the young Shanghainese artist began in 2005 by carefully assembling single portraits of buildings to create massive black and white compositions that surpass the physical limits of possibility but in the viewer’s imagination renders an almost plausible behemoth construction, alive yet forever a part of Shanghai’s history. In “Memory City II”, the smoke stacks and metal pipes are replaced by low-rise facades and elements of Shanghai’s lane life as the young artist’s focus shifts to the ubiquitous Shanghai urban landscape phenomenon of partially torn down residential buildings. The resulting compositions become dense, layered mountains of neighborhoods stacked one atop the other as if waiting to be leveled.” (Ouote m97 press release)

Sun Ji himself comments on his work as follows:

All these photos are about the familiar Shanghai in my memory. When I was still a child, these types of old factories and buildings were everywhere, alive and full of vigor. However, what I used to be so familiar with has literally disappeared in front of my eyes. Being ruthless is part of human nature and so is being nostalgic. While all kinds of old things are being destroyed boldly, we are irrepressibly reluctant to part with the past. I wonder whether architectural remains from past industrial times or whether life in the old lanes of Shanghai can be completely forgotten. But Memory City is about my personal memory of Shanghai, which is real yet also full of fantasy and becoming more faint by the day.  (read more…)

Lu Jun, China Real Estate Dream, No. 6, 2006

The other part of the exhibition is devoted to Lu Jun, whose large-scale photography works use the three fundamental elements of Chinese landscape painting – water, ink, and paper – combined with techniques of modern photography to create poetic landscapes that flow in both form and color. Thus he reinterprets the most iconic forms of traditional Chinese painting.

His earlier series “Chinese Real Estate Dream” (2006) is inspired by the real estate boom in Zhuhai (Guangdong Province) of the early 1990s:  lyrical, loose brush strokes lead the viewer’s eye downward through what appears to be an idyllic landscape. Yet upon closer examination we see that perched atop the splotches of ink resembling mountaintops sit photographs of suburban villas and modern office high-rises, a depiction of an ever rapidly urbanizing countryside.

The exhibition also presents some of his most recent works showing more abstract landscapes of ink, water, paper and photography.

Ein Beispiel für die vielbeschworene chinesische megalomanische „Bauwut“, die ich mittlerweile schon ein paar Mal zitiert habe, ist Jiading.

(Bild aus einem der Links, die ich unten zitiere)


Jiading liegt im Yangtse-Delta im Nordwesten von Shanghai, ist rund 463 km² groß und von über 1 Mio. Menschen bewohnt. Es ist eine von drei neuen Städten, die in den nächsten fünf Jahren, so die Planung, in der Umgebung von Shanghai entstehen (neben Songjiang New Town und Lingang New Town von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, die “Wasserstadt”, die in Anlehnung an den Stadtgrundriss Hamburgs entwickelt wurde) und damit eigentlich kein Stadt”viertel” mehr. Sie soll zum künftigen Zentrum für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur in der Region werden.

Momentan gibt es um Shanghai übrigens 12 sogenannte Satellitenstädte.

Die Informationen entnehme ich großen Teils aus chinesischen Infobroschüren (Danke an meinen China-Korrespondenten in Berlin!! :-) )

Jiading wurde im 10. Jahrhundert von Kaiser Jiading in der Nan Song Dynastie gegründet. Laut der Broschüren gibt es auch ein altes Zentrum mit “numerous historic sites such as Confucius Temple, Ancient Guyi Garden, Quixia Garen etc.). Laut Wikipedia gibt es aber außer dem besagten Tempel kaum historische Sehenswürdigkeiten – da in den Infobroschüren ebenso wie auf diversen Websiten hauptsächlich betont wird, was für das neue Jiading geplant ist, scheint der Wikipedia-Eintrag recht zu haben.

Jiading New Town soll eine neue moderne Stadt werden, mit einem „distinctive character in culture, social harmony development, comprehensive strength and strong radiation”, so eine Infobroschüre über Jia Ding Investment Guidelines.

Der Jiading District ist die zentrale urbane Gegend von Shanghai, die das Zentrum Shanghais mit den neuen Städten verbinden wird.

1958 wurde Jiading von der Stadtverwaltung Shanghai zur „City of Science“ ernannt. Hier wurde das erste Auto Chinas produziert. 1995 wurde Jiading zur Autostadt Chinas erklärt. Heute hat das Volkswagenwerk China dort seinen Sitz. Außerdem befindet sich die einzige chinesische Formel 1-Rennstrecke hier.

Seit 2003 gibt es eine Entwicklungsstrategie für die vier Teile Jiadings:

Ø Im Nordteil: Industriezone und Landwirtschaft. Betont wird immerhin, dass alles „in accordance with the function of modern city and te demand of ecological environment“ ist.

Ø Im West-Teil: Car City und Anting New Town, (“German Town” von Albert Speer jr., in Verbindung mit dem Volkswagenwerk für die untere und mittlere Führungsetage errichtet mit knapp 10000-15000 Wohneinheiten, davon zur Zeit 300 bewohnt – ein sehr “ergiebiges” Thema…werde darauf zurückkommen)

Ø Im Süd-Teil : Kommerz, Wohngebiete, „high level public service center“

Ø Central Area: Jiading New Town

Ein paar Links zum Thema, die meine Google-Suche ergeben hat:

Zur Industrial Zone Jiading

Entwicklung Jiading ab 2003, special focus on transportation

Jiading – first wireless zone in China

Bildergalerie

Shanghai Daily: Artificial lake will beautify new town