Future Sex

Photography
Installation
Exhibition 

Shinichi Honda

I have always been obsessed by the desire to create “humanized machine”. Humanity naturally has the ability to generate life miracle. But why am I specially interested in humanized machine? 

One of the answers might be traced back to the roots of Greek mythology, in which the figure of Eros had more or less enlightened me. As for literature, particularly among those contemporary ones, the works Dead Girls and The Allure, both composed by Britain writer Richard Calder, left an indelible imprint on my memory. Within his books, there was a group of whore gynoids (robots designed to look like human female) – the mixture of modern technologies and myths – that became the germ of my images. The gynoids, according to the character setup in those books, resembled the elaborate clocks and watches with precious metal, like the luxuries of decadent European brands such as Cartier and Bvlgari. Besides, I have been honored to meet some American scientists because of the cover-shooting program for magazine in the United States. The world view contained in Nanotechnology, raised by those scientists, which was the uncertain concept between infinitesimal machine and virion, was enormously attractive to me. Furthermore, as a photojournalist, I took part in the Artificial Life Conference of the middle 1990s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, the experience of which also had a great impact on me. It was in that period that I decided to pursue my artistic creation for reflecting the trend of advanced science. 

In 2002, I was consigned to a photography project for the metal installation artworks made by Mr. Masukuni Fujikake, the lecturer of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. That was the very opportunity spurring me on to the efforts of approaching Richard Calder’s world view via injecting my imagination into the works beyond the  photo studio. The outcome consists of the empty body created by Mr. Fujikake, the background world and the spiritual viscera embedded by me.

Zapallal & Yunrinaki

Artist: Andres Marroquin Winkelmann

A country with 27,012.900 inhabitants and 39.3% poverty. One third of the population lives in rural areas and 9 millions live in Lima, Peru’s political and economical capital city. Two years ago, 20% of the children didn’t have an opportunity to attend school.

The number of slums surrounding the capital city has grown radically over the last 15 years. Some became neighborhoods and others even districts. Zapallal lies on the peruvian coast, only 40 km out of Lima’s city center. To get to Yurinaki, a small village located in the jungle, you have to get over an elevation of 4755m above sea-level and travel 14 hours using public transport. Peru’s climate diversity, rough geography and economical situation increase cultural differences within the country.

With the help of the communities of Zapallal and Yurinaki, I started a photographic project, that deals with life conditions in these particular surroundings. I wasn’t interested in creating a classic reportage or using a journalistic approach. I wanted the community to participate in the project and involved my subjects in the creative process. They helped me composing the images, selecting and arranging characteristic elements of these surroundings, searching for typical spaces to stage every-day situations in order to deal with social and political issues. Most of the people now living in Zapallal came from the countryside to the outskirts of Lima, hoping to find better work opportunities and establish a solid economical wealth. The high percentage of unemployment and an overpopulated capital city didn’t leave them many chances except starting all over again. Most of the people I photographed in this project experienced this social instability.

Rural areas are almost ignored by the government, they don’t even exist on Peru’s financial map. In places like Yurinaki, this kind of isolation increases the already conservative mentality and later on evolves into distrust. The elder generations doubt and disbelieve in almost everything related to change. Absurd and old fashioned habits still remain active; young men marrying older women, obligating them to work on the fields, or having as many children as possible to increase the number of workers inside the family. In most of the cases families are only learning how to improve and adjust simple ideas about hygiene, social behavior and human rights through younger generations and thanks to educational programs supported by international and private institutions. Most of these children motivate their families to set new values at home, they are often considered being role models or even heads of their families. Thereby they set a new starting point to the development of a social behavior.

I organized a 5 day photography workshop for kids between 8 and 14 years. During this week, using Point&Shoot cameras, the participants had to photograph the following tasks: Bedroom, family, food, their home and their street. They had to shoot one task everyday, having five pictures for each of the tasks. With the help of their parents they took notes and described the motives they shot, having an opportunity to follow and perceive the reality of their own work. During the workshop I visited each of the families, spending some time with them. Using the same cameras as the kids, I also photographed the predefined tasks, simulating a child’s view by shooting from a low perspective. After one week of editing, I organized a little exhibition for the people involved in the project and the community, a show where the primary stage in the development of a visual world was displayed. The pictures the children made and the ones I took were mixed together on one wall, a presentation where the viewer couldn’t differentiate the pictures I made from the ones of the children. Presenting both photographic results at a same level, promoted the recognition of the children’s potential and achievements by the community.

This project depicts a photographic assembly of the ongoing process in this particular social development. The staged images were the result of an interaction with the community and after they’ve been introduced to a new way to do so, it’s again the children, who create a “picture” of their surroundings, which they show to the community in form of an exhibition, offering another possibility to communicate and sharing their perspectives. Through the children of Zapallal and Yurinaki, the families now have an opportunity to shape their old fashioned habits into new solid values. With this project I wanted to encourage interactions within the families and to help increase the personal and social development of these children.

“Conditions” ,

Artist: Andres Marroquin Winkelmann
Reviewed by Inbal Lily Koliner
As a child, whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always felt puzzled. The only answer I’ve managed to come up with was that ‘I’m certainly not going to be like everybody else’. What exactly this difference might consist of, I couldn’t – of course – specify.

As I grew up, and haven’t turned out quite the anarchist I might have had in mind, I’ve realized that a unique identity isn’t measured according to social labels. Yet, to this very day, I still see freedom of thought and expression and a pluralistic attitude towards others as highly important.

With this belief in mind, there’s no wonder I was keen to participate in Andres’s project – a project which “raises questions about social norms, and invites the viewer to enter a world in which boundaries fail to create differences, while differences are not only accepted, but even embraced”.

Interacting with subjects on a sociological as well as on a personal level, this work deals with individuals and individual choices. It reminds each and every one of us that we’re free to make our own decisions and to ask ourselves where we want to go.

Andres and I have been close friends for several years when he invited me to be a part of this project and I was curious to see how it might feel like to work with him, using methods that until then I’ve only heard about.
I discovered that staging a situation allows Andres’s photographer-subject relationships to stay true to his natural way of thinking. Instead of trying to spontaneously capture an “authentic” intimate moment – an attitude which might have been stressful and demanding for me – or even to re-produce such a moment from memory, he framed an abstraction of it, composed in a visual arrangement of me standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at my reflection.

This method allows him to go beyond the documented experience. The result doesn’t describe certain surroundings, nor does it portray a specific life-style, but rather exposes raw, untraditional forms of vulnerability, suggesting a sense of familiarity.

This is Andres’s visual narrative, a narrative which calls for mutual respect and acceptance while offering a prism of possible conclusions regarding cultural behavior.

kunst.licht Photo Art Gallery Presents

Opening: 3pm April 10th, 2010
Venue: 210 Wulumuqi Rd, Shanghai
April 10th – June 10th, 2010(Tuesdays closed)

kunst.licht photo art gallery is pleased to announce the launch of its new exhibition AS THEY ARE on April 10th. We will embrace the touching works which are included in two series-Zapallal & Yurinaki and Conditions- created by the photographer, Mr. Andres Marroquin Winkelmann.

Insights into the artist and his works!

What does the human figure stand for in landscape photography?

Behind every image, there is more than “V” signs in our hands and big smiley faces, the use of the human figure in landscape photography can be traced back through the development of European Landscape Painting, the Chinese tradition of Shan Shui and German Romanticism. Also, during the lecture we will be discussing the boundaries between land and human, spiritual and religious, our inner and outer soul.

Our lecturer Peter Dixie, a British Photographer, will also be introducing known photographers from around the world, Kalle Kataila (Finland), Weng Fen (China) and Peter Bialobrzeski (German), in order to elicit the meaning of the human figure in landscape.

The lecture will be held on the 21st of November (Saturday), 3pm at kunst.licht gallery.

Titled “Super Shanghai”, this workshop will give students the chance to work the streets of Shanghai side-by-side with a Pulitzer price nominated professional documentary photographer and photo journalist who also happens to be a just wonderful, warm and amazing human being

The hands on training will be embedded into discussions about technique and equipment, a historical overview and intensive critique of the students’ current work and their assignment to shoot “Super Shanghai”.

The total cost of the workshop will be 2500 RMB per seat and there will be only 12 seats available.

To learn more about Susana Raab click here. Also download the workshop outline in English and Chinese.

See you shooting “Super Shanghai”!

To apply for this workshop, please send us a short statement about yourself and 10-20 low resolution images.

Contact: T 21 624 907 37, doris (at) kunstlicht.sh

Susana Raab is a documentary photographer who began her career as a photojournalist in Washington, DC covering politics.  She worked for the New York Times Washington bureau for four years (where she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of a shooting on Capitol Hill) before attending graduate school at Ohio University School of Visual Communications.  While in graduate school, she interned at the Palm Beach Post during the 2004 hurricane season and her work there was part of a team package on the hurricanes that earned the Post the distinction of finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography.

In Ohio, she began two long-term projects: Consumed: Fast Food in the US; and Off-Season: America at Leisure.  These projects have received much recognition from the White House News Photographers Association, The Ernst Haas/Golden Light Awards, the Center (formerly Santa Fe Center for Photography), American Photo, Photo District News, and Photo Espana, among others.  Her work is widely exhibited, both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Madrid, and the Noorderlicht Photofestival in the Netherlands.

More information about Susana Raab can be found at www.susanaraab.com

On September 19th, British Photographer Peter Dixie will analyze the relation between modern science and technology and classic portraiture from an international perspective. The lecture will trace back to the development and styles of portraiture in history, and will explore the influence of modern science and technology on portraiture.

The session will take a theoretical look at portraiture covering meaning, the role technology plays in creating photographic images, the implications of this technology in portraiture, and arguing for the creation of portraits in series.

Peter Dixie is a British architecture photographer based in Shanghai. He studied Professional Photography at AIB (the Arts Institute at Bournemouth, now known as the Arts University College Bournemouth). He also studied photographic printing, processing and retouching at DOI Tech Tokyo for two years. He has a special deep insight towards technology and photography.

Exhibitions:
March 2009, New[AD]Venture. Shanghai. Group exhibition. In Passing: Two Personal Journeys, Series of 9 black & white prints.
July 2005, Peep. AOP Gallery, London. Group exhibition.
March 2004, Peep. Cafe Blu, Bournemouth. Group exhibition. New York seen through the eyes of 23 photographers.
December 2003, Help a London Child. Cafe Blu, Bournemouth. Group exhibition and photo auction in aid of the charity Help a London Child.
Purposiveness without purpose (March 2002). Gallery i, Tokyo. Solo exhibition. A series of 11 black & white images exploring Kant’s conception of Beauty.

Lectures:
Making Meaning: Narrative/Ambiguity/Symbolism – Garden Books & Café / 21.6.09
Constructed Spaces: the Human Figure in Landscape Photography – Garden Books & Café / 24.5.09
Portraiture: Culture/Theory/Meaning – Garden Books & Café / 12.4.09

Booking info:
Seats available: 20
Price: FREE!
Phone: 021-62490737 (Opening hours11:00-19:00, Tuesday closed)
E-mail: joanna (at) kunstlicht.sh; doris (at) kunstlicht.sh

2009 nextkunst.licht exhibition is the first of a series of exhibitions dedicated to seeking out the most promising talent among a young generation of Chinese photographers and giving them the opportunity to present their work before an international audience.

The first edition of nextkunst.licht will feature the works of five artists: Fei Tian, Ge Fang, Sun Yanchu, Tang Like, and Wen Jian.

The exhibition is open to the general public on:
June 20th-September 19th 2009, 11am-7pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 20, 4 – 6 pm
Location: 210 North Wulumuqi Road, Shanghai, China

The exclusive M1NT Shareholder’s Club in Shanghai provided the perfect backdrop for a very special art afternoon with Shen Wei. Selected guests enjoyed the reception with food creations by head chef Ian Pengelley and the artist’s one hour lecture on the successful series "Almost Naked" and the upcoming "Chinese Sentiment".

The workshop is open to practicing photographers and advanced students in photography. Participants will be selected by kunst.licht Gallery curators and Shen Wei based on materials submitted for review. The workshop will take place in the kunst.licht Gallery space in Shanghai from February 5th – 8th, 2009.

To ensure personal attention and individual teaching the workshop is strictly limited to 10 participants. Participants of the workshop must have a sufficient body of work both in quality and quantity to bring to the class critique. The participants will also have the opportunity to be selected as one of the next.kunstlicht artists if applicable.

You can download the workshop curriculum and further details (PDF) in English and Chinese. Please submit a brief biography and 5 – 10 samples of your work (JPEG ONLY) to workshop (at) kunstlicht.sh. The cost of the workshop is RMB 2000. Participants living outside Shanghai are responsible for their own travel expenses and accommodation.

And indeed it is what it says it is, a show, an event, a fair with some of the finest vintage and contemporary photography on display. With Japan as the guest of honour it was the first time for Paris Photo to pay special attention to the far east and its rich heritage in fine art photography. A good sign and a step into a very important direction as it might pave the way for a show focusing on Chinese contemporary photography.

I talked to many gallery directors, curators and collectors and they are all full of praise for the fantastic organization, support, press coverage and the very knowledgeable crowd of visitors from all over the world. If you’re into photography as a form of art, be it as a professional, collector, connoisseur or student, there is no way around Paris Photo. And last but not least it is in Paris…

Impressions from Paris Photo 2008

To find out more about next.kunstlicht, please visit the new website. Please also download the application form [PDF].

Check it out if you happen to be around!

Times Square, New York City

Yemi by Shen Wei

The roll of honour

All the people in your pictures behave very naturally. They face the camera as if they were facing themselves in a mirror. How do you achieve this? Have you sometimes also encountered difficulties? And how do you deal with these difficulties?

Gaining the trust of my subjects is essential for them to behave natural. Usually, I communicate with them intensively so that both sides do not feel embarrassed. Of course, a few times I have encountered some difficulties but they could all be sorted out.

What kind of people are you interested in for this series? Are there any specific characteristics that catch your eyes? If so what are these characteristics?

I have an instinctive curiosity about people. When I was little, I used to observe people on the bus. My subjects are from different classes, different races and different backgrounds. What I’m interested in is each person’s authenticity.

You are already working on the series “Almost Naked” for five years now. About this series you said: “what I want to analyze and explore is spiritually nakedness rather than physically nakedness.” What is this spiritually nakedness that you’re trying to capture? Can you further explain this?

Even though my subjects wants to reveal themselves and want to be understood through my pictures; in their physical or emotional nakedness they are still instinctively trying to hold back.  I can see this internal struggle in their eyes and can tell from their behavior. Not knowing what they’re hiding, I can see the vulnerability of human nature at this very moment. This is exactly the “Almost Nakedness” I am looking for.

You said: “The more images there are in the series, the clearer the content of the series becomes.” As Almost Naked is now in its fifth year, have you gained some new understanding and reflections upon it?

Nakedness can reveal itself in a direct physical way as well as in more abstract ways, it depends. Sometimes it takes all of my intuition to try to understand the people in my images.

Joey

According to your observation, what are the differences between Chinese and American in human nature, their desires, emotions and instincts?

Due to a different historical background and different conditions, people in China and America have different ways of expressing their feelings. Chinese people are more emotionally reserved while Americans are more open in showing how they feel.

When did you go to America to study photography? Did your understanding of photography changed during your years in America? What do you think is the most important thing in people photography?

I went to America in 2000 for further studies. I was a major in design and besides a personal interest I had little knowledge of photography. It was in my second year in college that I decided to focus on photography. I’m someone who always tries to face creation and the learning processes openly. I must have tried nearly every combination of method and material so my understanding of photography rose gradually. Personally, my favorite people photography is of that sentimental kind that can express reality and nature.

Can you share some of your experience, like some teachers’ words you remember or some masters’ articles that inspired you?

Every teacher gave me some inspiration, some more, some less. Even though some of them could not understand what I was trying to do, I gained some useful insights from their comments. Photography became something special for me after a lesson about Diane Arbus. I was deeply impressed by her pictures. So I made up my mind to become an art photographer, trying to record the significance of life.

Do you have some advices for those who’re planning to study photography abroad?

One should choose a college according to the connection between his/her own style and the style of photography at the school. Every college has different characteristics and goals in its photography major. Extensive research is the key to finding a suitable college.

Jody

Do you have new plans? What are your plans for the future?

I’m working on my new series “Chinese Sentiment”, still in the blueprint stage. I think an artist’s career needs patience and a long term perspective. I hope that more people will see my pictures in the future and that my pictures will touch them.

Do you think a contemporary photographer should manage himself? Or focus on creation?

Creation and management are both essential. Creation is important while management gives creation its full scope.

New trends surface all the time in America. Are there recently some new trends in style and methodology in people photography?

Sure there are trends in artistic people photography, but always inexplicit. In comparison, trends and styles in the fashion photography circle change much more rapidly. Sometimes it even feels like every photographer is creating a new trend.

Thank you very much!

Congratulations from everyone at the gallery!

The Pingyao International Photography Festival will take place from September 19th until September 26th. kunst.licht Photo Art Gallery Shanghai will participate with its own exhibition and will present  works by Bai Xiaoci ("I Live In Here"), Kasey Myrick ("Disturbances") and Shen Wei ("Almost Naked"). Shen Wei will also be featured with his new series "Chinese Sentiment" in a group exhibition called "Gazing China".

Please also check out our daily blog from the Pingyao Festival.

Icon Art Map launch event

Meet the crowd…

Yifat Hadaya of Icon Art Map and Lin Yun, Gallery Director of kunst.licht