NOW---Jin Jiangbo & Zhang Li
NOW
opening party: 2008-11-7 6pm
2008-11-7_ 2008-12-8
Add: 3rd Floor, No.3, the Bund, Shanghai 200002, China
Tel: 86-21-63215757, 86-21-63233355 *, 86-21-63234549
Fax: 86-21-53500059
SGA@on-the-bund.com
gr@on-the-bund.com
Website:
www.shanghaigalleryofart.com
www.threeonthebund.com
The Shanghai Gallery of Art is pleased to present NOW, a group exhibition of recent photographs by artists Jin Jiangbo and Zeng Li. Using photography as the medium to capture reality, both artists reflect on the intense physical changes of our urban environment. Cities have become too generic and similar in terms of their orientations and functions, and the total commodification of every aspect of our daily lives is assaulting our senses to the degree of exhaustion. The more we embrace globalization, the more we become numbed with an already blasé surrounding, taking it all at will and without any scrutiny.
Both Jin and Zeng not only bear witness to the intense changes of what is happening around us; their genuine interest is to capture a unique spatial history of a specific era, like an anthropologist proactively documenting changes of a given space all for the sake of recuperating a collective memory. Their preoccupation with recording the minutest changes of a given site is a form of social investigation, from observing a public square which has become the backdrop for projecting economic power and unity versus recording the reality of a sudden departure of a television factory, both artists ask us to contemplate the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary Chinese society. Furthermore, both Jin and Zeng express the artificiality of a transient environment, where the ambition to define oneself in the new global era sits squarely with a deep sense of insecurity, for there is a longing to return to a social unit that is both more hospitable and humane.
The first part of NOW exhibits a series of photographs by Jin Jiangbo. Titled "The Great Economic Retreat", Jin uses photography to conduct social investigation upon the sudden departure of a factory based in Dongguan in Southern China. Jin captures the scenes of a defunct factory right after the hasty relocation to another Asian country with a lower production cost. Life has vanished all of a sudden and what we see are desolate remains and debris. Jin's oeuvre manifests a correspondence between the artistic medium, photography, and the subject of representation. In that, Jin’s photographs reveal a particular moment and space by documenting evanescent scenes that speak so succinctly of the contingency and brutality of a new economic order. Surely the fight between progress and the survival of the fittest in the new ‘global’ era shall stand as a long neglected social and political issue for years to come.
Eight photographs from the "Tiananmen Square" series by Zeng Li occupy the second room of the exhibition space. Along the same lines as the German photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Zeng has been portraying and archiving Beijing's environmental changes as a result of the social and economic modernization for over a decade. This time, the artist documents the daily changes of Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Three photographs attest to how the site has emerged as a stage for various spectacles day by day from 2007 to 2008: a site for political assembly, national holidays and a tourist spot, Tiananmen Square is represented in its timeless quality as a public and political space which stands within the imaginary. Another five photographs, where the place has been transformed as a play on account of the Beijing Olympic Games 2008, draw the viewer's gaze away from the first selection. The symbol of national pride and celebration yet also of artifice and propaganda, Zeng undermines the very public and festive character which this historically charged place has meant to the people. Lin's archeological work generates an outstanding impression which highlights the contrast between a friendly and jovial ambience that is meant to have been photographed versus a neutral and almost impersonal perception of the artist himself.
Jin Jiangbo was born in 1972 in Zhejiang province. After graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, he worked as the Head of the Digital Art Studio of the same University 'till 2007. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Information Art & Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He now lives and works in both Shanghai and Beijing.
Jin has participated at the Venice Biennale (2003), the 3rd Nanjing Triennial (2008), the Shanghai Biennale (2002), Booming? - Solo Exhibition, Wall Art Museum, Beijing (2008), Memory Share, Shenzhen Museum (2007), Remote/Control, MoCA Shanghai (2007), Mahjong, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland (2005).
Zeng Li was born in Liuzhou, Guangxi province in 1961. He graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, Beijing in 1988. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
His recently participated at An Epoch of Yu Gong - Solo Exhibition, Shanghai Gallery of Art (2006), the Guangzhou Photo Biennial (2007), the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (2005), the 1st Guangzhou Triennial (2002), the 5th Sao Paulo Biennale of International Architecture Design, Brazil (2003).
opening party: 2008-11-7 6pm
2008-11-7_ 2008-12-8
Add: 3rd Floor, No.3, the Bund, Shanghai 200002, China
Tel: 86-21-63215757, 86-21-63233355 *, 86-21-63234549
Fax: 86-21-53500059
SGA@on-the-bund.com
gr@on-the-bund.com
Website:
www.shanghaigalleryofart.com
www.threeonthebund.com
The Shanghai Gallery of Art is pleased to present NOW, a group exhibition of recent photographs by artists Jin Jiangbo and Zeng Li. Using photography as the medium to capture reality, both artists reflect on the intense physical changes of our urban environment. Cities have become too generic and similar in terms of their orientations and functions, and the total commodification of every aspect of our daily lives is assaulting our senses to the degree of exhaustion. The more we embrace globalization, the more we become numbed with an already blasé surrounding, taking it all at will and without any scrutiny.
Both Jin and Zeng not only bear witness to the intense changes of what is happening around us; their genuine interest is to capture a unique spatial history of a specific era, like an anthropologist proactively documenting changes of a given space all for the sake of recuperating a collective memory. Their preoccupation with recording the minutest changes of a given site is a form of social investigation, from observing a public square which has become the backdrop for projecting economic power and unity versus recording the reality of a sudden departure of a television factory, both artists ask us to contemplate the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary Chinese society. Furthermore, both Jin and Zeng express the artificiality of a transient environment, where the ambition to define oneself in the new global era sits squarely with a deep sense of insecurity, for there is a longing to return to a social unit that is both more hospitable and humane.
The first part of NOW exhibits a series of photographs by Jin Jiangbo. Titled "The Great Economic Retreat", Jin uses photography to conduct social investigation upon the sudden departure of a factory based in Dongguan in Southern China. Jin captures the scenes of a defunct factory right after the hasty relocation to another Asian country with a lower production cost. Life has vanished all of a sudden and what we see are desolate remains and debris. Jin's oeuvre manifests a correspondence between the artistic medium, photography, and the subject of representation. In that, Jin’s photographs reveal a particular moment and space by documenting evanescent scenes that speak so succinctly of the contingency and brutality of a new economic order. Surely the fight between progress and the survival of the fittest in the new ‘global’ era shall stand as a long neglected social and political issue for years to come.
Eight photographs from the "Tiananmen Square" series by Zeng Li occupy the second room of the exhibition space. Along the same lines as the German photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Zeng has been portraying and archiving Beijing's environmental changes as a result of the social and economic modernization for over a decade. This time, the artist documents the daily changes of Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Three photographs attest to how the site has emerged as a stage for various spectacles day by day from 2007 to 2008: a site for political assembly, national holidays and a tourist spot, Tiananmen Square is represented in its timeless quality as a public and political space which stands within the imaginary. Another five photographs, where the place has been transformed as a play on account of the Beijing Olympic Games 2008, draw the viewer's gaze away from the first selection. The symbol of national pride and celebration yet also of artifice and propaganda, Zeng undermines the very public and festive character which this historically charged place has meant to the people. Lin's archeological work generates an outstanding impression which highlights the contrast between a friendly and jovial ambience that is meant to have been photographed versus a neutral and almost impersonal perception of the artist himself.
Jin Jiangbo was born in 1972 in Zhejiang province. After graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, he worked as the Head of the Digital Art Studio of the same University 'till 2007. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Information Art & Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He now lives and works in both Shanghai and Beijing.
Jin has participated at the Venice Biennale (2003), the 3rd Nanjing Triennial (2008), the Shanghai Biennale (2002), Booming? - Solo Exhibition, Wall Art Museum, Beijing (2008), Memory Share, Shenzhen Museum (2007), Remote/Control, MoCA Shanghai (2007), Mahjong, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland (2005).
Zeng Li was born in Liuzhou, Guangxi province in 1961. He graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, Beijing in 1988. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
His recently participated at An Epoch of Yu Gong - Solo Exhibition, Shanghai Gallery of Art (2006), the Guangzhou Photo Biennial (2007), the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (2005), the 1st Guangzhou Triennial (2002), the 5th Sao Paulo Biennale of International Architecture Design, Brazil (2003).
