Nihilsentimentalgia

┐ Victoria Jenkins └

“A characteristic claimed to be unique of photography has been its ability to record the visible, material world, its perceived objectivity and accuracy has lead to a utilitarian application of the camera as a tool for documentation, and this can be traced back to photography’s early history. Parallel to this is a history that echoes with illusion and trickery; photography carries a false empiricism, for which we may allow our guard to be dropped.

The photographs presented here are rooted in the language of rational investigation, employing quasi-scientific laboratory style conditions in to which a series of still lives, fictional archival images, are constructed. A commingling of varied sources occurs: vernacular imagery of magic tricks, home science experiments, divination practice, superstitious belief and forensic investigation. The intent is to play on the conflicts in the languages that are being appropriated: logic and absurdity, revelation and trickery, illustration and illusion, but also that which seems concurrent despite the apparent polarities: the image whose authority is asserted through a shrouding in secret language and gesture.

This collision and coinciding intends to produce a series riddled with ambiguities, the oblique amongst clarity providing a slippery surface on which to form the photographs narratives.”

More of Victoria’s world here

Tags: Black & White, Conceptual, fiction, Research, still life

┐ Theo Angelopoulos └

Theo Angelopoulos departs, today, at 76, ironically run over by an off duty cop while working on set for his next film.

It’s a sad moment for true cinema lovers but for the Greeks as well. Neither the kind of martyr they need today, nor the kind of sorrow or brief grieving mass hysteria in the media.
“Etermity and a Day” and “Ulysses’ Gaze” are masterpieces of which I am now reminded by this unfortunate happening. I shall see them again in the next few days and think of a no man’s land.

Wishing him all eternity and a day

Tags: Cinema, Theo Angelopoulos, ulysses gaze

┐ Chen Qiulin └

At a time when her understanding of contemporary art was still limited, Chen was unexpectedly invited to partake in Parabola, a satellite show of the First Chengdu Biennale (2001). On this occasion she created Ellisis (. . . . . .), a performance piece that she documented in film and photographs. The work is based on a Chinese expression that roughly translates as “sweet harm” and refers to all the enticing things that modern society throws at young women. In Ellisis, Chen sits in front of a vanity table placed outdoors among the rubble of an undeveloped site with new buildings, a coal power plant, and factories on the horizon. She is wearing a pretty dress and is admiring herself in the mirror, oblivious to a man throwing pieces of a soft, creamy cake at her until her hair, face, and dress are coated. Her absorption in herself and indifference to her surroundings are a metaphor for the situation that many young Chinese women find themselves in. Unlike older women, Chen’s generation has not lived through revolutions or hard times. Rather, they are seduced by the sweetness of a prosperous society while ignoring the potential emotional harm hidden within.
(…)
Sichuan Province experienced the worst earthquake in its history in May 2008. Only three months before the Beijing Olympics were scheduled to open, with China the focus of world attention, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, their loved ones, their homes. The severe sense of loss reverberated with Chen, whose most recent body of work reflects on life in Sichuan after the disaster. Peach Blossom (Tao Hua, 2009), on view for the first time in the United States at the Hammer Museum, was created in the same spirit as the earlier Wanxian video works—with an archival instinct and a lens on the personal, social, and environmental changes shaping people’s lives. In Chen’s words: “We cannot avoid natural disasters—life goes on. I made videos and performed in the areas hit by the earthquake as a commemoration and hope that more people will see how people are living in these areas and help them.”

source: excerpt from text by France Pepper. Continue reading

More of Chen’s work can be seen here

Tags: China, Direct Action, Environmental, Mixed Media, Performance, Video

┐ Hai Bo └

Time and memory weave through Hai Bo’s work, as they have for the last 20 years. For one series, They, he obtained souvenir-photos from family friends and acquaintances taken during the era of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Often these were group portraits of Red Army members posed in rows: No hierarchy of importance was allowed and anonymity was underscored with uniform haircuts and utilitarian clothing. With a distance of 30 years, Hai Bo found and gathered the same individuals to recreate the original souvenir-photos. He posed them in the exact positions. Then he paired the pictures of past and present in diptych form. Today, with the influx of Western influences in China, hairstyles and clothing vary from one person to the next. And, because the subjects are not part of a danwei (work unit), the re-photographed individuals are no longer interchangeable with one another. Rather than members of a group, they are individuals grouped together.

They highlights not only the passing of time, but also the poignant cultural divide between China then—the agrarian-based communist country under Mao Zedong, when the Cultural Revolution swept away the vast legacy of Chinese traditions in the arts and literature—and China today, which is undergoing a rapid expansion, westernization, and industrialization as part of the global market economy.

Still, Hai Bo’s artistic preoccupations are grounded in personal experience. “After moving to Beijing, my hometown took on a new perspective,” he wrote in 2005. “Once I returned to Changchun and met an old acquaintance of my mother on the street. She and her friends used to play with me when I was small, and in my mind they were a group of beautiful young girls. I was shocked by the middle-aged woman in front of me and, without thinking, I exclaimed: ‘How come you have become so old!’ She replied: ‘Look at yourself, have you not grown up as well!’ I suddenly felt the cruelty of time.”

excerpt from article by Philif Gefler

More of his work here and here

Tags: China, contemporary, family archive, Landscape

┐ Li Yun └

“We Chinese people are struggling in the whirlpool of cynicism with no exception.

This is my understanding of the current times. With frenzied emotions and twisted bodies, we are marching forward with vigorous strides. While people are gaining tremendous amount of self-satisfaction in all respects, what emerges behind is a deeper sense of dissatisfaction and helplessness. All this is because that we always have some in-born things left to be fulfilled while the reality cannot be altered. Therefore we choose to forget. It is just like a person who has stopped the psychological growth in his childhood. The body is mature but he has given up the self-improvement of the mind. He just indulges himself in the pleasure of enjoying life whenever possible.
(…)
´Recent reading and realistic experiences make me believe that our history is not only lonely but also destined with no possibility to escape. Looking at these objects, I can’t image what else functions they can bring to us. How useless they are, except for being used to exchange money.

Often I feel that we are always waiting for a convulsion, a convulsion that is not coming from the reality but from verbal words of others. In reality there is only daily life left and we are reminded by other ‘mouths’ that the current reality is so full of surprises that we find no way to fit in.

However all these present in front of you today can’t provide a heart felt convulsion. Because the appearances are so insignificant and the huge reality behind is always so obscure. I am only expecting for a slight disturbances on your heart, just like the dust floating under the light, so that my intentions won’t be realized with nothing.”

excerpt from text by Li Yun. continue reading

His work here

Tags: China, Conceptual, still life

┐ The Decemberists └

Something about Jiang’s work made me think of this. A real gem! For those who don’t know “Sleepless”, here by “The Decemberists”…

Tags: decemberists, music

┐ Jiang Zhi └

“Oneness and unity only rests in ‘word’, never in the ‘matter’.

I recall a conversation with a neurologist about whether ‘insanity’ exists, and if it did, how. We arrive at an interesting concept, that we were not very interested in the notion of ‘insanity’ itself, in other words, to us, ‘insanity’ in ‘general’ does not exist. ‘Insanity’ only exists in ‘situations’ and ‘conditions’, that is, ‘who’, ‘with whom’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘why not’…? Only in these ‘wholes’, ‘situations’ and ‘assemblages’ does the word ‘insanity’ has a ‘referent’. Here, the significance of ‘insanity’ lies in its ‘eventualness’ and not its ‘essence’. And here, because of the ‘eventual’, ‘insanity’ gained a ‘new’ reference, such that ‘sanity’, ‘fascination,’, ‘dream’, ‘rationality’, etc. can no longer be distinguished. Such ‘attitude of observation’ no longer serve as the ‘judgement’ of words (the essence between insanity and sanity), nor the ‘micro-politics’ of the boundary between objects (insanity against fascination’,), nor the ‘fight’ between words and matter (the essences of insanity versus the eventual in insanity). Instead, it’s the ‘materialisation’ of a concept, a ‘new’ form of ‘clinical symptom’, ‘an unprecedented form of insanity’: who, with whom, when, where, how, why… What we are observing has always been the ‘process of individuation of events under certain circumstances’, not the words, the object, person, nor subject…We call that ‘becoming insane’.

The operation of our brain is not like Freud’s ‘stage’, with various characters, symbols, representations. Instead, its operation resembles the ‘factory’ of Deleuze: machines, mechanisms, installations, settings. It constantly produces desires and becomes a ‘machine of desires’.

To complete this concept, Deleuze divided the Freudian desire: we never long for a ‘matter’, a ‘word’ or any ‘object’. What we yearn for has alway been a ‘state’, a ‘whole’, a ‘collection’. We crave not for ‘daddy mummy-penis nipple’, but for ‘a world of one’s own’. As Proust puts it, ‘I hunger for not only this woman, but also the landscape surrounding her…’, ‘What a woman wants is never only a dress, but the world she can embrace wearing the dress. What a man wants is never only a woman, but the life he can live having that woman.’

It is ‘desire’ that creates a ‘world we must arrive’, rushing us to ‘leave here to go there’, compelling us to ‘become’.”

excerpt from text by Véronic-Ting CHEN. Continue reading

More of Jiang’s work here

Tags: China, Conceptual, poetics

┐ Chen Wei └

“The photography/installation works of 31-year old artist Chen Wei illustrate an intricate imagination fascinated with the eccentric and fanciful pursuits of early science, mathematics, alchemy, philosophers and madmen. Taxidermy, broken mirrors, melted wax, bats, bees, deserted bedrooms, and found objects become the artist’s tableau. With a meticulous attention to details, Chen Wei creates mesmerizing scenes that leave the viewer puzzled by their intricate narrative, fantastic visual impact and odd beauty. In some of the works, the sole human subject resembles an absorbed mad scientist or passionate poet, adding feelings of isolation or estrangement to an already bizarre scene.
read more
Chen Wei’s creative and contemplative process consists of searching for and compiling myriad fragments of personal memories, and incorporating inspiration and objects from childhood or fantasies imagined juxtaposed with realities found in modern China. Most of the works are sketched and created on location in the artist’s studio and then photographed, with the end result being less about the camera process as it is about the assembly of the elaborate elements that are captured in his works. The spirit and style of Chen Wei’s photography works also point towards a new generation of emerging Chinese artists born in the 1980’s who are less focused on political history or obvious social criticisms than personal and intellectual freedoms and the individual’s place in a now modern and developed China. History for them has been obscured by economic and social reforms, and the speed and scale of development is the contemporary China they have witnessed.”

source: m97 Gallery

His place here

Tags: chen wei, China, Conceptual, Constructed, Installation, personal memories, photography installation, Sculpture, still life

┐ Amanda Tinker └

Palladium Print 8″x10″

“My latest work, still in progress, explores the intersection between the psychological landscape of family relationships and the body’s physical form, compromised, intact and otherwise. This work deals both specifically with the physical effects of a degenerative nerve disease in my family, and generally with the anxieties, joys and ambiguities of family life. I want to confront my own anxieties over my children potentially developing a debilitating illness, but at the same time appreciate the simplicity and overwhelming urgency of childhood.”

More of Amanda’s work here

Tags: Alternative Processes, Family, Intimacy, palladium, US

┐ Gunnel Wåhlstrand └

109 x 160 cm, ink-wash on paper

“For eight years, Wåhlstrand has worked exclusively with a kind of re-development of private photographs, using black ink and water, a precise and time-consuming technique that she masters to perfection. The earlier body of motives consisted of her father’s family photo album, but has now been expanded to a wider family group. One of the larger works, Mother Profile, is a rendering of a studio photograph of the artist’s mother. In the exhibition, it is placed so that she gazes at the landscape where her father dramatically crashed and fell to his death. Further on in the room, a portrait of him can be seen. It is the smallest work in the exhibition and the only one in colour. The artist decided that the fact that no colour photographs ever existed of her grandfather, was a strong enough reason to return to colour, for her sake as well as for his.

Wåhlstrand’s depiction is a both deeply personal and universal process. The precise and demanding task of depicting these documents is a way for the artist to physically and psychologically approach a personal history of which she, without any own experience of it, lives the consequences.”

source: Andréhn-Schiptjenko gallery

More of Gunnel’s work here

Tags: Alternative Processes, Archive, family album, Intervention, Sweden

┐ Kevin Van Aelst └

I don’t usually post on photographers whose work is being highlighted by other photography bloggers, since people who visit this place are often the same. I like to offer something else, and for that I trust my own parallel research. There are times like this when I shred that “rule” to pieces given the impact the work has on me. Here’s Kevin’s work, found in Lenscratch

Artist Kevin Van Aelst is not one to cry over spilled milk. More likely, Van Aelst has “spilled” the milk himself and is diligently coaxing the white drops into a semblance of order. Van Aelst’s specialty is something he calls “conceptual photography.” His large color prints are treats for the eye; Van Aelst’s strong design sense is garnering him increasing commercial work. But what engages Van Aelst more than the act of photography is the play of ideas and their realization in visual form.
“Something very important to me is the idea of randomness, taking something that should be random and applying a very specific order to it,” says Van Aelst.
(…)
“If conceptual art didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have any interest in making art. I respond much more to ideas than purely visual things,” Van Aelst says. His overarching idea is the use of everyday objects and materials to illustrate and represent more profound concepts. Milk spills in a logarithmic spiral. Gummy worms represent human chromosomes and gummy bears make up the periodic table. Hair in the bottom of a sink is arranged in the graph of a human heartbeat. An Oreo cookie’s cream filling is cut away to reveal the yin yang symbol.
Hearkening back to his undergraduate studies in psychology, Van Aelst recalls that he took classes in cognition and perception – how people view stimuli differently. Much of his work operates on two levels of perception, the conceptual and the material. Referring to his photograph “Periodic Table of the Elements,” now part of the permanent collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Van Aelst has found there is the viewer “who sees gummy bears and has to read the title to see the periodic table and (the viewer) who sees the periodic table and has to get real close to see that they’re gummy bears.”

source: article by Hank Hoffman

More of his work here

Tags: Association, Conceptual, Constructed, metaphor, NY, still life

┐ Melinda Gibson └

If Melinda Gibson’s photomontages look familiar, don’t be surprised. A flash of Ed Burtynsky here, a slice of Juergen Teller there, they are all made up of elements of some of the major works of the 1990s and 2000s, culled from the pages of The Photograph As Contemporary Art. Written and edited by Charlotte Cotton (former curator at the V&A and LACMA, and now creative director of the UK’s National Media Museum), it is one of the key texts for students starting out in photographic education. Which is precisely why the 26-year-old, who graduated from London College of Communication in 2006 and is now a visiting lecturer herself, chose to use it.

“I wanted to produce a body of work that was original – unique pieces unable to be reproduced – which in turn commented on the availability of photography in our heightened digitalised age. I also wanted to provoke questions about copyright and ownership through the re-appropriation of imagery. What is important to me is questioning the medium and the conventions that surround it, examining these and suggesting other ways to view them.”
Using just a scalpel, an adhesive and “a lot of patience”, she took the book apart (…)

But, as she has already hinted, there’s another, more critical purpose to the work, in particular the way such books serve to canonise particular photographers and images. “What I find frustrating is that the same images appear and re-appear every year at [educational] institutions. As you wonder through the different degree shows, you feel as though you have seen it all before – just modern takes on Martin Parr, Stephen Shore or Nan Goldin. What crossed my mind was whether these institutions are to blame for this, or whether it is truly impossible to produce something new. In my view, the canonisation of such sources acts as a hindrance to creativity, where people feel they have to produce something similar to be accepted or understood.”

in British Journal of Photography. Continue reading

Melinda’s blog here

Tags: collage, Conceptual, Emerging, Medium, photomontage, UK

┐ Julie Cockburn └

“The loss of, or manipulation of, the human face is the most disturbing and fascinating aspect of Cockburn’s work. These faceless or masked portraits me of John Baldessari’s manipulated mass-media images. He often used colored dots, or other means, to cover faces, interrupting the viewer and de-personalizing the image. But Cockburn’s photographs seem to have the opposite effect. She often embroiders or cuts out shapes into a complex pattern, and this record of tedious physical labor draws me into her images. Furthermore, whereas Baldessari begins with mass media, Cockburn often begins with a portrait, or something that appears to come from a personal photo album. Still the manipulating work that Cockburn does on the photograph creates a barrier between myself and the subject, but this barrier is no greater than the history that already divides me from this image of yesteryear.

Her work strikes me as, metaphorically, having something to do with memory. Her “hand crafted” photographs point towards the intensely personal and perspectival nature of our memories. As we process and understand our experiences, does memory obliterate reality or is memory itself an act of discovery? It seems significant that many of her chosen photographs include women. This intensifies both the manipulative and hand-crafted nature of her work. Is memory — is history — gendered, and what control do those who are remembered have over those who are remembering?”

source: Transpositions, excerpt from text by Jim Watkins

More of Julie’s work here and here

Tags: collage, Embroidery, found photograph, Mixed Media, UK

┐ Michael Wolf └

I’ve tried to pull back and not make a post each time I see someone’s work I find relevant but don’t personally like, but this is an exception (as there have been others).
Michael Wolf is definitely a talented photographer and I’m sure a very energetic person, since the rythm of his production is overwhelming.
Having said this, is my opinion that he works in series, not in projects, and for that I make him an example of one of the issues in the definition of contemporary photography vs art. Not that one or the other is more or less relevant, (even if we have our own tastes) but we should learn to call things by its names, and not be afraid to invent new concepts if there isn’t one to describe the object of our concern.
As far as I can understand it, a project is a research-type approach to a subject, in which the formal aspects are not determining the content of the imagery, even if is commonly cataloged as a series; a series is a much more superficial approach to a subject where repetition is often used to tight things together and make a point.
I’ll be using these words more thoughtfully in this blog from now on…

More of Michael’s work here

Tags: Asia, Germany, series

┐ Walter Hugo └

“In order to create the portraits, his sitters must stare at a bright light for 10 seconds without blinking, creating an intense and concentrated glare, a glass window into their souls. (…)

Can you talk us through the process of making a glass photograph?

Ok, I’ll try and simplify this as much as possible as it’s quite a scientific process. The process I’ve developed pre-dates modern photography, it’s from around 1850. First I had to build a camera, in order to make the glass plates in the size that I wanted. My camera houses a dark room, so the whole process takes place inside that, something like a 150 year old Polaroid! I prepare the glass meticulously before each sitting, cleaning and applying the chemicals that I have made specifically. My subject will then have to sit absolutely still for between five and ten seconds. This is more difficult than it sounds, especially with bright lights shining at them. Once the image is developed and fixed I can bring it out into the daylight and show everyone for the first time (including myself). This is a lovely joint experience.

source: i-D online interview

More of Walter’s work here

Tags: Alternative Processes, ambrotype, Portrait, UK

┐ Rita Nowak └

Starting with an intense engagement with the self-portrait as a genre, two years ago Rita Nowak began reenacting famous masterworks with artist friends. In choosing the works to model, Nowak works associatively in that some works—due to certain gestures and moods—trigger memories of people well-known to her or stand in an “almost magical proximity” to them. A central interest here is what the artist calls the “memory effect”: “from history a voice that tells me something about people from my past.”

Her portraits intend neither the perfect, historicizing mise en scène of the persons portrayed using costumes and props, nor an elaborate, theatrical treatment of the space. Instead, her attention is primarily focused on choosing an appropriate space/background and, especially in the current works, arranging the accoutrements found on site. It is above all the relation established between the space and the person portrayed that gives each photograph its particular characteristic.

The spaces are chosen on the one hand in terms of their appropriateness for reenacting a certain masterwork, and at the same time reflect the individual personality of the person photographed. The people depicted are thus—aside from their telling poses—decisively interpreted by the space surrounding them. Sometimes, conclusions can be drawn about the actual private and social world of the person portrayed. In each case, “the scene serves as a dramatic counterpart to the subject,” as the artist put it. In recent works like Venus in Furs or Invert Muse this has taken on even more significance, in the sense that now architectural objects or urban landscapes almost seem to demand being staged in the style of a masterwork—with or without a concrete reference.
(…)

Source: Eikon

More of Rita’s work here

Tags: Austria, Group Portrait, Portrait

┐ Aidan McNeil └

More of Aidan’s work hereand here

Tags: Canada, still life

┐ Marika Asatiani └

More of Marika’s work here and here

┐ Nicky Coutts └

“The photograph Estates was based on 17th century drawings and paintings of stately homes originally commissioned to show them to their most opulent advantage. Each original is manipulated to look like a tower by copying and repeating the floors and placing them one above the other.”

source: Danielle Arnaud

more of Nicky’s work here

Tags: Mixed Media, Research, UK

┐ Christin Boggs └

“With mass acceptance of America’s fast-food mentality, older traditions and rituals of preparing and sharing food are rapidly disappearing. Food and tableware have undergone a chemical makeover, resulting in supermarket shelves stocked with items that imitate flavors and textures grown in nature. In contrast, seventeenth century traditional still life paintings portray natural foods and tableware made from authentic glass, cloth, and silver. Contemporary modes of preparation are exposed when supermarket products are recast into the formal setting and lighting portrayed by the Old Masters.”

Christin’s statement

More of her work here

Tags: Environmental, food, still life

┐ Tim Hyde └

More of Tim’s work here

Tags: collage, Mixed Media, Sculpture

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