Viewpoints: Chinese Photography Today highlights the work of six artists - Chi Peng, He Yunchang, Hong Lei, Song Dong, Weng Fen and Zhang Huan - who use the camera not to document the tremendous changes taking place in China today but rather to record scenes of their own devising.
Only in the work of Weng Fen, represented in the exhibition by two works of 2002, Bird's Eye View: Shenzhen and Bird's Eye View: Haikou, is there a glimpse of the overwhelming scale of urban developments in China today. The focus of his photographs, however, is always on the human relationship between enigmatic figures, generally teen-age girls, who gaze into the distance. In contrast, Hong Lei and Chi Peng have little or no interest in the outside world. For them, the camera is the most effective way to create highly realistic images of events from the past or reveries on life today. Continuing his extended commentary on traditional imagery of Song Dynasty painting, Hong Lei uses himself as a most improbable looking model in Sakyamuni - After the song Dynasty "Sakyamuni Coming Out of the Mountains" by Liang Kai, 1998 . Chi Peng looks into the mirror with his camera in the series of photographs titled Consubstantiality, and creates haunting dialogues between sexually ambiguous figures that yearn to comprehend each other.
The exhibition also includes photographs of staged events that did occur but were seen by only a very small audience as in the case of Zhang Huan's Seeds of Hamburg, 2002, He Yunchang's Shooter, 2001 and Song Dong's Stamping the Water, 1996. The latter has now become one of the most celebrated images of Chinese photography in the 1990s. In Seeds of Hamburg, Zhang Huan who was naked and covered in bird seed, entered a cage into which twenty-eight doves were released. The performance which is captured in a striking series of twelve photographs, comes to a conclusion as the artist leaves the cage cradling a dove in his arms.
While Between Past and Future - New Photography and Video from China travels the country to great acclaim, the current exhibition provides a welcome opportunity to focus on the connections between the work of six artists of different generations to whom the camera is primarily a means to capture dreams and to document performances, many of which have achieved an almost mythological status in a short period of time.
*Catalogue Available
纽约前波画廊自2004年1月13日起将举办摄影展《视角：中国今日摄影》。展览共展出六位艺术家的作品, 包括：迟鹏, 何云昌, 洪磊, 宋东, 翁奋和张洹。 在他们的摄影作品中, 相机不是用来记载中国现今发生的巨大变化, 而是去记录这些艺术家们虚构幻想中的世界。
翁奋最具代表的两幅作品--《深圳》(2002) 和《海口》(2002), 表现了中国现今势不可挡的城市发展。他摄影的通常表现十几岁的女孩凝视着远方的焦点, 侧重于如谜一般的人类关系。与之相比, 洪磊与迟鹏的兴趣不在于外面的世界。 对于他们来说, 镜头是创造过去或幻想中超现实的肖像与事件的工具。洪磊在延续宋代绘画的同时, 把自己着装为释迦牟尼, 创作了《仿梁楷释迦出山图》 (1998)。而迟鹏创作的一系列以镜子反射为主的照片《同体》, 用性别模糊的形体, 强调了人与人之间渴望交流的强烈感。
另外一部分展览包括一些行为艺术照片, 记录了当时的行为过程, 例如张洹的《汉堡种子》（2002）, 何云昌的《枪手》（2001）和宋东的《 印水》（1996）（中国九十年代最着名的照片之一）的作品。在《汉堡种子》中, 张洹赤裸的身体全部覆盖着鸟食。他走进一间鸟笼, 里面有二十八只白鸽。最后以艺术家怀抱一只白鸽离开鸟笼作为尾声。整个过程令人震惊, 由十二张照片记录。
大规模巡回展《过去与未来-中国现代影像展》在各国赢得了喝采。前波画廊的这次展览让我们关注到这六位不同时代的艺术家之间的衔接。他们运用相机记载了自身的理想和值得珍藏的行为艺术, 其中许多作品在短时间内神话般的取得了巨大的成功。
*前波画廊为此展览出版了展览图录