Sep 18th
This weekend I went to see a Chinese artist Xiuwen Cui’s photography exhibition called “Existential Emptiness”. Her works gave me a really deep impression.
Overview her works are totally black and white color. In my opinion, this series works has a really specific artistic conception, which is a traditional Chinese landscape-painting feeling through the whole series works. These beautiful works combine Chinese ink landscape painting with conceptual photography together. One of the important elements in Chinese painting is negative space. It can make the artwork have blank space to make people think more about the work and themselves. Negative space can add more artist feeling and good composition for the artwork; at the same time, it can have a communication between artwork and viewers. So, Cui used those advantages of negative space in her own works. In her exhibition, most of her work has a wide negative space like a quiet space to make viewers to fall in her work and try to figure out what she try to tell us through the picture. In this series works have a lot of strong contrast in color, in space, and the elements of the works. As for color, black and white use their strong contrast to the time and space directly separated. Everything is really quite and looks stop in the picture. In visual, the color is really simple and clear, but it already shows you everything in a strong way. For space of her work composition, she used a lot of blank space. It looks nothing in there, but actually that is important. It is the place to let you communicate your idea and thinking with artwork. In some case, that blank space even important than other color images. The main characters in this series works are two short hair girls with skirts. One of them is a real person and the other one is a plastic model with the looking as that real model. This strong beauty contrast looks tell us more stories about this work.
Xiuwen Cui has a good skill to show her work in a strong way. I like the way she shoot. When I try to understand more about her concept, she just told me she shot this in a really cold and high altitude mountains in north of China. The white negative spaces which viewer interested are all snow. This answer prove my personal understand about those negative space. Blank is a high artistic level. Simple, but it has more stories to tell you and attach you.
After I do some research about this artist, I found she has graphic design and painting background. More experience and different background always helps more about create artwork. Different perspective understanding for one work can make artwork’s meaning go deeper, so that’s why her work looks so different. When I was little, I dreamed to be an artist in the future. Later, I became a designer, but I never give up my artist dream. Now I am working on fine art with design thinking. I wish my photography work could more thoughtful.
Is there a link you can post to this artist's work?
ReplyDeleteI think this is her: http://artlexing.blogspot.com/2010/09/cui-xiuwen-artworks.html
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to find a fellow artist from your same cultural background who inspires you. Glad you were able to see her work!
ReplyDeleteActually I think this is the link, I remembered her name from the ACP book.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kiang-gallery.com/main.html
Hello, dear all,
ReplyDeleteI have a question, I couldn't fine the new post button. How can I solve this problem?
Sep 25th
ReplyDeleteThis Thursday my class went to Jackson Fine Art Gallery to see Sally Mann’s exhibition together. This exhibition gave me a new way to think.
Sally Mann is good at black and white photography. In this exhibition, I am so lucky to see two of Mann’s famous project. One artwork is a series portrait of her husband and another work is her young children. Both of these two works are in black and white. As for me, her work doesn’t have too many colorful elements. She just used the simple, opposite color and shape to express her emotion and the topic of the photo. The way she shoots no matter in vision or thoughtful are very clear and strong. Let me describe some example from this exhibition.
The portrait of her husband is the strongest portrait in that exhibition. Mann’s husband got sick. So she wanted to record her husband and her love feeling for him. Mann use her real feeling to shoot a real person and show people this is the person she love been her whole life. In her artist statement, she said this series of photo is a memory, and a love story. She shot her husband with various angles and poses and from many different perspectives. The nature and real feeling of this series of photos is the point, which are really different with the professional model with some ready poses. We can feel a true feeling of artist personal outpouring. There has one picture, which called Was Ever Love. It moves me a lot. Mann’s husband is lying down with a pillow and showing his side face. He looks as if he is in a deep sleep. The emotion on his face is really quiet and comfort. There is a lot of scratch texture in the photo, but only her husband’s face is in focus. The picture use same eye perspective to shoot. We can have the same experience with the artist when she looking at her husband in sleeping. The beautiful line of his face and the soft black and white color of the picture are reflecting the artist’s hazy feeling, which is looks like in reality, as well as in her dream. This picture has really artistic conception. From his white-gray beard, we can deeply feel that they have together been all their lives. In vision, although this picture shoot in 2009, the texture and the color of the photo make it has a daguerreotype picture feeling. The historical element is proving the memory and love topic again.
Another deep impression series works is “ At twelve”. One picture is the body of a girl standing next a chair. A lot of people think this picture is sexually suggestive. However, I have an opposite opinion. As for parents, the purpose for shoot this series pictures are in order to record their kid grown up. Teenager is the line to distinguish kid and adult. A lot of young children begin to understand adults’ thing and world at that time. Teenager period is the best witness for children grow up. As for parents, just feel happy to memory this special moment. The body of the girl just tell viewers, her daughter from a children become to a girl gradually. I can understand this series pictures are another love story—family love.
In photography, environment might helps to tell some story, but the character’s body language and close up shoot can emphasize the topic in a strong way as well. Sometimes, we don’t need to have too much background information, the close-up scene already tell everything clearly and stronger.
what is ur blog? I think I have the old address :( Sam
ReplyDelete