Focus on China

Focus on China
Curated by Lü Peng & Paolo Woods

Hong Lei
A Trilogy of Evolution

Industrialization, the exploitation of natural resources and the pollution of Chinese landscapes are the principal focus of Hong Lei’s works. Through skillful work on setting and post-production, the artist revisits famous paintings from the Tang and Yuan eras in order to transform them into contemporary transpositions.

Hong Lei (b. 1960, Changzhou, China) is China’s preeminent conceptual photographer and was one of the leading artists in the era of the Chinese New Photography movement in the 1990s.

Dong Wensheng
Wilderness

Dong Wensheng presents a series of portraits where subjects’ faces are covered or their backs are facing the camera. In these, various symbols from Chinese tradition replace the faces of the individuals being photographed, who are always nude, symbolizing the conflict between the desire to undress––and thus break with social conventions––and the strong connection to the history and traditions of one’s own country.

Dong Wensheng (b. 1970, Ganyu, China), a leading exponent of Chinese conceptual photography, has had his work exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world.

Han Lei
Assemblage

Han Lei’s work is a reportage exploring the rural areas of contemporary China, a visual journey through hidden details which, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, form a colorful, decadent picture, far removed from the image of today’s fast-growing, modern China that is often shown in the media.
In his shots, Han Lei wants to eliminate redundant visual distractions, focusing on details that arouse emotions, on movements, expressions, the psychology of his subjects, to shed light on the great social changes that are taking place in his country.

Han Lei (b. 1967, Kaifeng, China) was one of the first professional photographers in China following the Cultural Revolution, and is known for his dramatically lit scenes with low saturation.