World is a long, long story with all of us in it as characters, and photographers are those who volunteer to be the storytellers. When we are lost in the complexity of the story, there are a group of photographers encapsulate those chapters for us to concentrate our limited attention on the concise narration of photo language. This month Je Fine Art Gallery assembles four celebrated photographers from home and abroad to tell stories they gathered from all the different corners of this world for us who are so curious but so tired from the visual bombardment of daily life.
The Beginning & Development
The story is not an ordinary one from the beginning, and the development of the story is enriched narratives.
Jonathan Anderson & Edwin Low, known as Anderson & Low are fine art photographers who have been collaborating since 1990. Their works cover a wide range of themes of portraiture, architectural studies, abstract images, reportage, nudes, and landscape, residing in well-known art institutions all over the world, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The works of Anderson & Low displayed in this exhibition shows how a new space is established on the flat surface of photos. Architectures and the nature, human bodies and architectures, different dimensions intersecting each other challenge the viewers’ perception of photography. Their narratives exquisitely fuse the realm of reality and dreams, as their intention has never been the authenticity of the material, but of the mind.
The Transition
After the climax is the transition to the hidden passion.
Eva Rubinstein is a Polish-American photographer, a kid of a pianist and a ballet dancer who raised her into a professional dancer. She never thought that she will leave her name in the history of American photography, not even when she picked up the camera at the age of 34—but as it turns out, she became extremely well received and held nearly 100 solo exhibitions around the world in the following years.
Rubinstein’s obsession with the “empty house”, makes people think in relation to the celebrated Korean director Kim – Ki-duk’s movie with the same name—when the residents leave, the left, invisible back side of the life, is perhaps the existence of the realest. Love, laugh, tears, quarrels, making up and saying goodbyes, all these intimate human activities and emotions, leave traces behind in the discarded space. Rubinstein’s works lead us wandering into the empty house after all the exterior climax pass, and in the most inconspicuous corner, we find endless imagination and bless.
The Ending (endless)
French artist Christian Chambenoit has a Chinese name, Changyi. He lived in Taiwan for 12 years after obtaining his master degree of photography and films in Paris ( ENSAD ). He moved to Shanghai with his families, in 2007, and makes photos and paintings and art direction for a living. Now Changyi has a photography wet plate studio in the creative industry center next to the Shanghai Railway Station.
Wet Plate Processing contributes as one major charm of his photography works.
Minute lives is the subject of many of Changyi’s photography works, such as little bugs, butterflies, etc. Wet Plate Processing gives these insignificant lives a sense of timeless beauty, making the images seem to come from old natural museums that stand the test of time. Standing before Changyi’s works, what one may experience is not simply the visual effect of “the vintage”, but more importantly, a gaze into the mysterious notion of life itself.
About the exhibition
Dates: Oct 12, 2016 - Nov 14, 2016
Opening: Oct 12, 2016, Wednesday
Venue: Je Fine Art Gallery Shanghai
Courtesy of the artists and Je Fine Art Gallery Shanghai.
