Empty Seat: Chinese Conceptual Photography

Tang Contemporary Art is proud to announce that “Empty Seat: Chinese Conceptual Photography” will open in Bangkok on March 25. The pictures made by the artists create a void between images and ideas; they have reserved a seat in the hopes that the viewer will fill this void.

Weng Fen’s works focus on the sweeping demolition and construction that has taken place in the course of China’s modernization, but they are the artist’s personal interpretations, not documentary photographs. Ji Zhou’s photographs are black, white, and grey, and the images are obliterated by grey dust. He used dust refine familiar scenes from our everyday lives into a simple and pure world, silent and profound. Yang Yong’s photographs more often present his observations of interior emotions. In Anonymous Stills and Nervousness, women are his primary subjects. Love Letters is considered one of Jiang Zhi’s most important series. Jiang sprayed flowers with alcohol then lit them on fire, and in these images, open flowers burn in the flames. They present both the blossoming and withering of living things. Liu Yujia’s work is entitled MacGuffin, after something immaterial or non-existent, and the desire or suspense that it triggers. It was one of Hitchcock’s trademarks. It is an unreal, pure facade, which forms the core of words, actions, and even the entire story. Fan Xi’s tree-themed works are comprised of more than one hundred trees in a single location, photographed from different perspectives in the same period of time. She takes these trees as small, localized details, piecing them together on a computer. When the data is processed, the real environment disappears, and the new image creates a virtual reality outside of nature. For Amelie, photography is more than a factual record. It is a constant practice of spiritual asceticism; it is writing poetry. 

The images made by these seven artists represent different types of constructive experiments. Through everyday objects that have been made unfamiliar, viewers come to know the personal experiences and emotions of the artists, and together with the artists, they cast off rules and restrictions and move towards freedom.