Adrian Wong: "Affective Portraits"
David Boyce and Adrian Wong are both interested in identity, memory and language. Part of the conceit underlying this particular body of work is an interest in non verbal communication and the desire to conform to identified societal norms.
These photographs depict non-traditional emotional communication in family or commercial studio portraiture. Emotions such as anger, sadness, despair, disgust, ecstasy. Anything except cookie cutter smiles. To create the “Affective Portrait” images a series of temporary photography studios were set up across Hong Kong — reminiscent of the department store “family portrait studios” popular in the 1980s. Subjects were recruited to participate in photo sessions designed to simulate (and in some cases elicit) a range of emotions.
Through self-directed and external interventions, these subjects engaged in acting training, visualization exercises, directed facial action, and stimulus response to achieve the desired affective state. Some were asked to isolate muscles in the face and upper torso and contort them to match universal markers of emotion; some were more simply asked to, say, chop onions or hold a piece of bitter gourd beneath their tongue; others to relay emotionally charged recollections in detail. The resulting body of images aims to expand the medium of studio portraiture to incorporate the full range of emotions that characterize human experience.
David Boyce: "Affective Portraits"
David Boyce and Adrian Wong are both interested in identity, memory and language. Part of the conceit underlying this particular body of work is an interest in non verbal communication and the desire to conform to identified societal norms.
These photographs depict non-traditional emotional communication in family or commercial studio portraiture. Emotions such as anger, sadness, despair, disgust, ecstasy. Anything except cookie cutter smiles. To create the “Affective Portrait” images a series of temporary photography studios were set up across Hong Kong — reminiscent of the department store “family portrait studios” popular in the 1980s. Subjects were recruited to participate in photo sessions designed to simulate (and in some cases elicit) a range of emotions.
Through self-directed and external interventions, these subjects engaged in acting training, visualization exercises, directed facial action, and stimulus response to achieve the desired affective state. Some were asked to isolate muscles in the face and upper torso and contort them to match universal markers of emotion; some were more simply asked to, say, chop onions or hold a piece of bitter gourd beneath their tongue; others to relay emotionally charged recollections in detail. The resulting body of images aims to expand the medium of studio portraiture to incorporate the full range of emotions that characterize human experience.
Shi Jing: “Buddhist Time” Series
Consisting of portraits of Galileo, Einstein and Buddhist master Mencuo, his “Buddhist Time” series takes a cross cultural approach to our understanding of time. Though it is often presented in mythic terms, Buddhist approaches to time encompass both the minute and the gargantuan. For instance there is the idea of the “ksana” which roughly corresponds to 1/75th of a second and within that brief glimpse of time there are thought to be 900 instances of arising and ceasing. The rebirth and passing is echoed in the concept of “Buddhist time” or “Dharma Time.” Buddhist time refers to three stages after the passing of Buddha during which his teaching and influence slowly decline until he has absolutely no power and the next Buddha is born to save humanity.
While Dharma time is represented by Mencuo, Galileo symbolizes the brining about of a paradigm shift in European thinking from a religious and mystical understanding of the cosmos to a black inky space governed by the laws of science. Galileo was of course imprisoned for his belief that the earth moved around the sun, and was also known for his own theory of relativity which states that the laws of physics remain the same in any situation where things are moving at a constant speed. Using the example of a ship travelling at a constant velocity on a smooth sea, he explains that in such a situation, passengers on the lower deck would have no understanding of whether the boat was moving or still — just as we do not feel the fact that the earth is orbiting the sun at 108,000 km per hour, because that speed is constant.
Einstein’s general theory of relativity examined the impact of gravity on notions of space and time. . . for instance gravitational time dilation — the fact that atomic clocks placed at different altitudes will eventually start to show different times. Another example would be gravitational lensing whereby a galaxy cluster or black hole — something with a serious gravitational pull — distorts the appearance of stars behind it by blocking or refracting the light. When the observer, the black hole and the star behind it are perfectly in line, the effect produced, an “Einstein ring” looks similar to an eclipse. Meanwhile if the observer, black hole and star are not exactly lined up the effect produced, the “Einstein Cross,” may look more like viewing an object through a prism where there are multiple copies of the same object all appearing at once.
Employing a similar brand of trickery, Shi Jing embodies these concepts in his paintings by using frame-mounted LED lights to create the effect of three different images. As the observer changes their physical position, different colors of light take up residency in the grooves of the paint and a new image is revealed. “Darma Time” is translated as “three times” in Chinese and the three different positions reveal very different images of the figures of Galileo, Mencuo and Einstein. We can see them transforming from robust, to slightly tired, to almost invisible as if their influences has diminished in the way of the Buddha.
So from the religious to the scientific theorists, Shi Jing then moves to the era of space exploration where the astronauts and scientists have a chance to prove these theories — for instance the Hubble spacecraft produced excellent photos of lensed galaxies and quasars — distorted by gravitational pull. “Crescent Moon” and “From Yuri Gagarin to Yang Liwei,” reference this era of space travel and human ambition and the shattering of any vestiges of the idea that the heavens were populated with gods.
Rather they are the home to inert pieces of rock or burning balls of fire. Shi Jing like these symbols for their ability to conjure up ideas of impermanence. The moon for instance is constantly waxing and waning while the asteroids are constantly changing — by the second we’ve captured them on film, they are already occupying a radically different position in the universe, due to the great speeds at which they travel. There is also the idea of catastrophe embodied in the soul of those dangerous rocks — the possibility that they will slam into the earth and bring about a Mesozoic-era style extinction. All of this brings us back to the central interest of Shi Jing’s work, which is that despite the achievements of scientific progress, the questions of man’s existence will always be left to the philosophers.
Wang Taocheng: "Practice of Portraits" ( a series of 5 works )
Last year (2011) I was working on this “Practice of Portraits.” There are a few pieces in which you can see figures through a light source projecting from behind the painting. But this time I want to use a new technique.
So I use my own newly-created technique called silk wrapping: first I paint a portrait on the first layer of silk mounted on rice paper mixed with alum liquid, then I wait for one week, and then glue them on to a hand-made envelope. Inside of this envelope, there is a digital print of the portrait, but you can’t see it at all. The whole thing is wrapped with with another layer of translucent silk, and then I paint on this layer as well. This is the first time I have employed this tecnique of double-layer silk, which from the images depicted in this work, to the materials used to depict them, nothing is separate or independent.
Concept:
Throughout the course of Western art history portraits have always played an important role as a form, in terms of both paintings, and scuptures. However in the past, in Asian countries the most important part of artisitc practic was the landscape painting, which required skill and spirit. In portaiture we focus on what is an image, how can we make an image, on three-dimensional perspective. But landscape painting is not interested in the question of “What is the image?” Rather it is more interested in questions such as “Where is the image,” and thus it emphasizes the idea of process and of time, both second and fourth dimensions. In this series, I used a lot of pieces of silk for wrapping again and again. The half translucent paper-like silk not only gives a mysterious quality, but more important is how I use a material to address those issues of dimension in an artwork. One layer and another one layer, they are not brush strokes anymore; they are materials which you can see and touch, and I wrap them into the space where those brush strokes should reside: Are they Western or Eastern? Are they posed or real? Ar they made on purpose or are they just a coincidence? You can notice that even these pieces of silk are painted with strong sense of design and a decorative feel. I would like to call them decorative objects.
I selected fives male subjects: they are artists of the young generation who are living and working in Europe. For me, they represent contemporary art practice in its use of many different medias and fields. Then I painted them in a quite realistic way — you might compare them to the skills found in the painters of the former Soviet Union art but also the Italian and French preists who were working for Qing Dynasty Court.
Wu Gaozhong: About “Mirror Frame” and “Mirror”
The Mirror Frame series exists in a place where present life becomes absurd and disordered, and ordinary dreams and expectations become ridiculous. This series twists something that should have been beautiful and ideal and changes it into something aimless, cheap and empty, presenting a false beautiful reality that is void of spirit. The work “Mirror Frame” is intended to be the focus of this series of work.
Wu Gaozhong
July 20, 2013
Zheng Wenxin: About My Recent Paintings
There's always a sense of crisis in my mind. It's not about a panic due to the end of the world. It's the sense of physical space and space of consciousness being alienated or corroded by an external force. However, we can expand our own power through an active awareness of the surroundings. The core of this work begins with the erosion of the contradiction between public and private space? This kind of expression is very much different from the medium of video. I believe, apart from my powers of art creation, there must be a supernatural power is collaborating with me.
