Imagining the world in reverse

• Source: Global Times
• [11:16 July 07 2010]
• Comments

By Nick Muzyczka

Cheng Yuyang's photographs are bold, visually arresting creations that retain a certain fluidity and ambiguity even though they are carefully controlled in terms of composition.

The artist uses a large format camera without negative film, a relatively unusual practice nowadays.

"Usually the large format camera uses 8 by 10 inch negative film, but he exposes his scenes directly onto silver prints, which results in all the images being produced in reverse," said Cheng Xixing, director of the Don Gallery which is currently hosting Cheng's exhibition.

"Because he doesn't use negatives, his photographs are all unique and cannot be copied," she added.

In this exhibition entitled Reverse, each of Cheng's works is made from eight photographs which appear as negative images. In order to create something that resembles a seamless image, the photogra-pher had to employ a degree of guesswork when positioning his camera, judging the continuity by eye.

While the overall pieces are pretty smooth, there are interesting variations produced as each individual photo doesn't quite match up with neighboring shots. This method of construction lends a disjointed, jarring quality to the photographs.

Were the photos constituting each piece combined to form one seamless image, they would remain evocative but something would be lost. This "something" is different in each work.

In Cheng's water town pieces, for example Zhouzhuang or Wuzhen, the cut-up nature of the compositions reflect how these places are dissected by the various waterways running through their midst.

The disjointed feel also helps to echo the organic construction of the ancient towns, where buildings of various shapes and sizes are layered and squashed together.

In Capital Steel Factory, the signature piece in the collection, Cheng depicts a soon-to-be-demolished factory on Chang'an Road, the famous Beijing street that runs past Tiananmen Square.

"The factory is located at one end of this long street, and was built in the 1950s. It was first located in the suburbs of Beijing, but as the city expanded it became more centralized," said Cheng Xixing.

With the expansion of the city and the need to improve environmental conditions in the area, the local government decided to relocate the factory to Hebei Province, a process which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs.

"The artist likes to focus on historic landscapes and buildings. His cut-up style is appropriate for describing destruction and demolition. In other works he records the destruction of the old hutongs in Beijing," Cheng Xixing said.

The photographs in Reverse are reminiscent of the monochrome negative images frequently used in movies during flashback scenes, often when a director wants to suggest that some powerful image or epic realization is flashing through the mind of a character.

It is interesting that we associate this visual style with a kind of hyper-reality or excited mental state; it is as if these "negative" moments are somehow more real than the "real."

The disjointed method employed by the photographer complements the idea of the photographs as mental images flashing through a mind. The discrepancies in the overall image would be the equivalent of mental "processing errors."

Cheng's work manages to capture this feel, with his images relating something that is both dreamlike and vivid. It is easy to think of Capital Steel Factory as a painful visual thought flashing through the mind of a worker whose livelihood has been ruined by the demolition of the factory.

"He thinks of himself as a dream-catcher, and wants to force people to rethink their notions of reality," explained Cheng Xixing.

On a less specific level, the pieces work to describe the changing urban landscape of modern Chinese cities.

Many contemporary artists are engaged with this topic, so much so that it is quickly becoming a tired area.

But Cheng's works have a certain freshness and don't seem to rely solely on this concept. His photographs are detailed and inspire a reflective mood in viewers.

There are a number of other interesting pieces in the collection, including one focusing on Tiananmen. It is one of the few pieces to include human figures, though these were shot using long exposures and appear as white spectral figures. Cut-up and reversed, the work presents an unusual rendering of this often photographed scene.

This is the first time Reverse has been shown in Shanghai, though it has previously exhibited twice in Beijing.

Date: Until August 22, 11 am to 6 pm, (closed on Monday)

Venue: Don Gallery

Address: 1863 Huaihai Road Middle 淮海中路1863号

Admission: Free

Call 6473-1533 for details