MILES ALDRIDGE - Imperfect Beauty

The Legendary Photographer On Discovering The Art Of The Lost Moment

There are few photographers working today whose body of work is instantly recognizable, but Miles Aldridge has made memorability his signature. His subversive pop art scenes of hypnagogic color-soaked cinematic perfection contain an elusive aesthetic quality that runs through every image like an enigmatic signature, one that has been busily deconstructing notions of female beauty and the malegazeforthepast20years. His recent book, P​ leaseReturnPolaroid​(Steidl), marked a radical departure from carefully staged and executed image-making, providing a glimpse into an unintentional and instinctual realm of the subconscious, where the genesis of his images actually takes place. In this extract from an extended interview in AUTHOR, he tells us why a love affair with disruption, decay, and destruction has revealed the beautiful imperfection of his inner life.

AUTHOR:​What did you discover looking at the Polaroids that you felt you had never seen or realized before?

Miles -​I started to nd pictures that I didn’t understand, even though I had taken them. I mean, there were pictures where I had taken a Polaroid of space before the models were placed in it, just so I could see the light and the strangeness of this empty scene, and it feels almost like a crime scene because of the attention that my camera and my light has created. There are many shots like that, where they are empty of the model and the scene becomes very pregnant and poignant with meaning. That is why, in a way, they feel appropriate, because I took them but I don’t remember taking them. I’ve found these images that are mesmerizing and intriguing to me, not because of the image I was trying to take, but because of accidental things, such as the model not being there or some damage to the image... I became really interested in creating a series of these that come together in a kind of Lynchian dream narrative.

AUTHOR: ​There is a sense of intense beauty precisely because of their imperfections.

Miles -​I think there is always an attraction to things that are cracked or ruined or broken. What that is, I don’t know, but I think a concrete floor can be quite beautiful, but if it has a crack in it, then it

can be even more beautiful. The crack draws us into thoughts about our own mortality and as much as we want to be fabulous, we are not. The crack in the pavement, the tear in the canvas, and the smear of the pain, are all truthful marks that underpin this idea that we are not immaculate God-like creatures, we are all awed like the deeply human characters Shakespeare depicted in his plays.

AUTHOR:​It’s the passing of time that is beautiful, the melancholia – to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Richard II, let us make dust out paper and with rainy eyes write sorrow upon the bosom of the earth...

Miles -​Beautiful. Yes, it’s all about the beauty that has passed. You know, I was so drawn to these awed scratched and wrecked images because I think, coming after ​I Only Want You To Love Me,​ where I had presented a kind of Technicolor universe; this represented the other side of the coin. This was the director’s script with all the continuity notes. It’s interesting for me how much I’ve enjoyed seeing these images, and the question for me now is, do I continue with the kind of Technicolour perfectionism, or can some of this accidental damage, disruption, and decay become instilled in the final images? I think the answer is yes, it can.

Interview by JOHN-PAUL PRYOR ,

Pictures by Miles Aldridge

What is happening in Lebanon?

Lebanon’s multidimensional crisis did not occur overnight but rather is a product of a decades-long political and economic policy build-up. A network of interdependent private interests shaped Lebanon’s post-war economic model, leading to its collapse. After fifteen years of war, from 1975 to 1990, a rent-seeking economy relying on the real estate and banking sectors eroded state infrastructure and utilities in favor of their privatization. The collapse of this model in 2019 led to severe socio-economic consequences, which were only compounded by COVID-19 and the Beirut port explosion in 2020; Lebanon is now a site of one of the world’s worst economic crises since the 1850s. The resulting repercussions have trickled down and manifested in the daily realities of the people; they are excessive in nature and constantly proliferating, taking different shapes and forms. And while thousands left the country both legally and illegally, looking for a better future elsewhere, many stayed despite the daily manifestations of the crisis that are partially shared and sporadic across households, neighborhoods, and social classes. Individuals could not simply take a passive stance against the failure of state services and lack of basic utilities; they had to find alternatives. Today, businesses, families, and individual households are supplied with only a couple of hours of state-generated electricity; they are consequently organizing their days around arbitrary outages. In many areas, gaps in electricity supply have now been covered by a total reliance on private generators, offering a more systematic outage schedule. This reliance comes at a price as extremely high bills are being charged in U.S. dollars rather than the collapsed national currency, rendering the cost of this basic utility over 400% more expensive. As a result of the collapsed energy grid, residents of Lebanon have resorted to solar power as a more efficient and sustainable alternative. In Beirut and beyond, any view from an elevated point can testify to the bourgeoning solar panels on rooftops; you would quickly notice added patches of a dark-blue layer supported by metallic structures in the already-chaotic urban landscape.

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Infrastructure failures have extended to incorporate another vital utility, namely water; turned-on faucets inside the flats have barely one or two drops of water coming out, indicating yet another shortage. The residents have turned to private water companies to fill either their buildings’ tanks or their private individual tanks, all of which sit on the rooftops; a stage where the crisis plays out materially. Water trucks can be seen parked on the streets, with thick black hoses sticking out and extending up to the top of the buildings to fill out the said water tanks. The individuals’ determination to provide for themselves has further been evidenced in their approach to banks, which contain increasingly evaporating deposits and savings. Since the outset of the economic crisis, banks have transformed into sites of volatile hostility and have become heavily securitized, even militarized in places. Long lines have formed outside the banks and ATMs as depositors wait to withdraw what little they are allowed to from their imprisoned savings. Such scenes take place under the cautious gaze of private security and police officers. Banks are also heavily guarded with metallic sheets, completely wrapping the facades of the buildings, further insinuating a fear of deposited money breaking out of its confines. Such security measures were a direct response to wanton acts of violence, such as vandalism and break-ins committed by the protestors, as well as the nigh-daily incidents of armed depositors breaking into banks and holding staff hostage until the requested amounts of cash are released.

These cracks and traces of Lebanon’s economic crisis have become very visible in the social, cultural, and urban fabric of the city, transforming the lived realities of its inhabitants and ushering them into new forms of survival.

As the economic crisis reaches its third year, Author’s founder Oona spoke with the Lebanese artist, Dia Mrad, about his recent Utilities exhibition. The purpose of this discussion was to accurately depict the crisis to a global audience through the eyes of someone living in Beirut. In this interview with Author, Dia explained the background for creating the exhibition, the everyday challenges people in Lebanon are faced with, and how artists are using this crisis to connect the country with the outside world.

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Oona: You seek to excavate the built environment and record, through your lens, the many artifacts of Lebanon’s economic crisis. What in particular stood out for you creating this series?

Dia – This series started with the objective of answering a question I was frequently asked when I traveled through 2022: How’s the situation [like] now in Beirut? I felt like I couldn't answer this question fully without becoming aware of what is happening, at least on an urban level, which speaks to my practice of documenting the city. Upon returning to Beirut, I started to observe and direct my attention to the elements portraying reality. It would be hard to pinpoint the crisis to photographable urban elements. As I walked [through] the streets of Beirut, I could feel the anger, the disappointment, the frustration, and the emotional struggle engulfing the city. But I had to look for symbols and signs that are able to portray this new reality. The first element that stood out to me was the addition of solar panels on the rooftops of Beirut, which are even visible from the streets. This recent addition was [manifesting] at such a fast pace and on such a large scale that it felt like something was changing overnight. I was curious to understand how a country that is undergoing a financial crisis was able to afford this relatively expensive solution. I decided to buy my first drone and try to document this process from an aerial perspective; I started to truly understand the scale of this addition. Something that stood out to me was the calmness of the shots and the contradiction they posed against what was really going on. This first approach informed the rest of the work by looking for elements that are added onto the cityscape, symbolizing the ongoing crisis or the ways that people are overcoming it.

Oona: In your own words, what is happening in Lebanon?

Dia – What’s happening in Lebanon is truly insane on so many levels. It’s suffocating and confusing. This project is an attempt to answer that very question. “What’s the situation like in Beirut now?” is something I've been asked more times than I can count. It’s [both] madness and it’s maddening. We’ve all actually been the victims of a major Ponzi scheme and we have no way of seeking retribution or justice. We’ve been scammed by our own government, [which has] only become apparent in the last few years. And right now, we are suffering the dire consequences of that scheme which started with our deposited money being stolen from our accounts and the inevitable collapse of our national currency. Not to say that we deserve what happened to us, but you reap what you sow and we’ve definitely sown some seriously rotten seeds. Even when presented with an opportunity to correct our mistakes through the recent elections — we failed. We reelected the same corrupt ruling class that has drained the country of its money and people. It’s madness — the way we live is mad; the way we make money is mad; the way we spend that money is even madder. We seem to have become numb to this madness. We seem to have lost our belief that we can have the power to change all of this. We’ve completely let go and we spend our days trying to adjust and adapt. 

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Oona: How have these cracks and traces of Lebanon’s economic crisis become visible in the social, cultural, and urban fabric of the city?

Dia – The economic crisis has become very visible, you cannot miss it. Despair is in the air and it surrounds every aspect of our lives, from the huge increase in the number of beggars on the streets and the crazy lines of people waiting to buy bread; to withdraw money from the ATMs; to fill up fuel; to buy basic medication and necessities — you can feel the crisis all the time. We are angry. We are frustrated. For those of us still living in Lebanon, a huge part of our lives is missing. We miss our friends who immigrated in search of a better life; we miss talking to each other and not having to complain about the difficulties we face daily; we miss going out without having to consider a million things beforehand; we miss being able to turn on the lights after midnight; we miss not having to worry about our income [and] finding work. It really is a crazy situation that has infiltrated every facet of our lives. Can you dismiss the crisis? Even those who are [either] able to overcome the daily manifestations of the crisis or aren’t thinking about it are bombarded with reminders everywhere in the urban landscape. You cannot leave your house, without being faced with an army of water tankers roaming the streets and reminding you of the water shortage. You cannot even sit in your apartment and isolate the noise coming from the street. You cannot overlook the sight of the heavily securitized banks, now adorned with metal sheets covering their once-glazed facades. Even looking out from a balcony, you can spot the electricity crisis in the form of newly added solar panels. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, the country going through a conversion to sustainable energy. But it is an enforced solution — not out of choice but out of necessity. It’s sad and symbolic. It only shows you that we know better, we know how to solve our problems. So why isn't this mentality applied on a larger scale? Why are we only concerned with temporary small adjustments instead of truly targeting the bigger problems we have? Instead, we learn to live with them and just make it to the next day.

Oona: And how is that displaying itself in the Lebanese art world?

Dia – While art production continues to be of impressive scale in Lebanon, the chance to show that art and for the public to perceive it has become dimmer and dimmer. The 2020 explosion played a major part in this phenomenon as most art-related spaces and artist studios were damaged by the blast. The economic crisis also played its role in distracting artists from producing by keeping them busy to stay afloat amidst a sinking economy. Even when the artists were able to produce, the spaces that used to host their exhibitions were no longer available. But like any international crisis, the one in Lebanon provided artists with a subject matter and a lot of emotions that needed to be expressed. We are all angry and we have a lot to say. We, as artists, are lucky in the sense that we have this creative outlet through which we are able to express, connect, and start the process of healing. For me, it has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I am able to express my feelings through my work which lets me approach my point of view with others and develop a sense of community. On the other hand, it is a hard task as it leaves me in this space of feeling things all the time; I am unable to extract myself from this reality and disconnect. And with no end in sight for our troubles, I seem to have become completely immersed in it. The 2019 revolution and the onset of the economic crisis were heavily manifested in the streets through the work of graffiti artists that quite literally painted the town, a daily reminder of the harsh realities we live in. Photographers and painters were racing to document and portray this new reality. [They] were able to not only express their and the population’s feelings but were also essential in raising international awareness on sociopolitical and economic issues. The changing landscape of the country due to the revolution, the blast, and the economic crisis provided artists with a canvas on which they were able to express [themselves], which in turn helped Lebanon connect with the world. 

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Oona: What about the physical manifestation of transforming the lived realities of inhabitants and ushering them into new modes of survival? 

Dia – Our lives are completely transformed by the economic crisis and its subsequent consequences on our daily activities. The crisis transformed our lived reality into a surreal one. A lot of times, I feel like I am in a mental asylum. People, including myself, seem to have totally lost it. We’ve become crazy. We’ve been living in survival mode since the 2020 explosion — even before the revolution started. It has been one thing after the other, and can you blame us for going crazy? There is [only] so much that the human mind can handle and we reached the tipping point a while ago. We still manage to go out, party, and live each day as if it were the last day of our lives because, actually, it just might be. We have no guarantees and no safety. We live in a turbulent world and at any point, everything can fall apart and our constructed reality will come crashing down. It is an inexplicable state of fragility and vulnerability. We act strong but, in reality, we are breaking down. We fake it, but are we really going to make it? I do not think so; not unless we make drastic changes. It is only temporary and only a matter of time before we have to face what we've created. We've only been mastering the art of ignoring it and we’re pretty damn good at hiding it.


Oona: Your work focuses on the infrastructural dimensions that were most affected by the crisis and its material manifestation, one that consists of added layers — rather than those absent — onto the city’s urban fabric as economic crises are associated with a lack of materials.

Dia – Looking at the economic crisis in Lebanon from an urban perspective, I had to come up with a methodology that allows it to be portrayed. And while usually a crisis is associated with a lack of material, in this case, I turned to look at the materialistic layers that were being added onto the city’s urban fabric as a manifestation of the crisis, and a manifestation of the ways in which people are adapting to the crisis. This contradiction can be felt more specifically with the addition of solar panels and new water tanks on the rooftops of buildings. While that action [in] itself does not necessarily refer to a crisis, in the case of Lebanon, it is representative of an infrastructural collapse and the action taken by individuals to overcome it. The crisis could have been showcased with images of empty shelves in supermarkets and pharmacies, or gas stations out of business due to the lack of fuel, which is a more orthodox way of reporting on a crisis. But, in line with my practice of documenting the city and the built environment, I had to look at changes on a bigger scale and not be so direct with my approach. So, for example, when it came to the banking sector, instead of showing the lack of funds, I chose to show the addition of a layer of metal that was added as a reaction to the hostility generated by the lack of funds.

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Oona: Elaborate on your practice of ethnography at home: How you are advancing this idea further by centering yourself on the absence of human elements while focusing on the material urban landscape as a site of sociopolitical and economic phenomena?

Dia – Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the perspective of the subject of the study. Being immersed in Beirut’s social and urban landscape as an inhabitant and artist, my work can be perceived as ethnography at home, being at once the person conducting the study and the subject of it. It is rather a subjective ethnographic experience that aims not only to excavate and explore but to present a personal point of view stemming from living in the city and experiencing the different aspects of the cultural phenomenon associated with it. My work has always been an indirect way of representing this ethnography. By steering away from showing people and focusing on objects and the built environment, that is done by people and for them, the work focuses on the material manifestations related to peoples’ lives. At the end of the day, these objects and constructions are indicative of how we live and are a direct reflection of our experience in the city.

Oona: What about capturing and isolating these contemporary artifacts, not for the sake of decontextualization, but for representation or manifestation while you blur the lines between the signifier and the signified?

Dia – “[…] Artifacts, things, etc., actively shape, impact and transform the perception and, consequently, the understanding — human beings have of the world in which they dwell” (Kirchhoff, 2009). Building upon this definition, the project employs an archaeological lens in excavating the urban landscape of Beirut in search of signs of the crisis. Artifacts in archaeology are telling [about] a way of life [during] a specific time. They provide insights into the daily practices that govern people’s lives and constitute an entryway into their mindsets. By decontextualizing the objects related to this economic collapse, the project blurs the lines of signification by representing the crisis through elements that are not necessarily indicative of it. According to Peirce, “We think only in signs” (Peirce, 1931). Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts, or objects. But such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. “Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign,” declares Peirce (Ibid.). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as “signifying” something — referring to or standing for something other than itself. Keeping this in mind and looking at the artifacts of the crisis in Lebanon, the objects themselves become the crisis, containing within them not only an indication or a sign but going further to embodying the crisis itself.

CREDITS

Interview by Oona Chanel

Introduction by Philip Alexandre Livchitz

Picture courtesy of Dia Mrad

The unknown self - TOMOO GOKITA

The celebrated artist talks to Author about his enduring fascination with fabricated glamour

The respected artist Tomoo Gokita has carved himself a reputation as a somewhat controversial painter in the lexicon of contemporary art, producing work that combines abstract expressionism with a classic surrealist aesthetic resolving itself somewhere in a monochromatic landscape that might best be described as a world of almost airbrushed abstraction. To some his early works appear wilfully kitsch, initially taking as their source material shoots from fashion magazines or the soft porn imagery of Playboy. However, as his practice has evolved, the forms he creates have become stranger and increasingly non-representational in nature, occupying a unique universe of smooth curves and obscured faces that is very much his own.

Here, the artist speaks to AUTHOR about his enduring fascination with fabricated glamour and tells us why the painting process is unlike an out-of-body experience, in which the self is routinely obliterated.

AUTHOR: The British psychologist D. W. Winnicott famously stated that ‘artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide’ – what is your opinion of that quote?

Tomoo: I’ve never actually thought about it, but I suppose this notion is true in regard to certain aspects. While I have this desire as an artist for my works to be acknowledged and to receive praise, there are times when I just wish people would leave me alone. Also, speaking of the paintings themselves – there are particular parts that I want to communicate and hope for the viewers to look at, and, at the same time, there are other parts that I don’t want to be observed too closely.

AUTHOR: What draws you to portray archetypal figures and why does your work always obscure the faces of said figures?

Tomoo: In fact, I don’t have this so-called awareness of “concealing the face” of my figures. It is more of a sense of destroying status and identity in order to create a face that has never been seen before. Perhaps it’s more about this thrill of wanting to look at something that’s frightening or unpleasant – such as monsters, specters, and aliens. It’s easy to portray emotion through facial expressions and I often think, for instance, of how a mystical, elusive, and enigmatic face can make people feel uneasy, or how it could even verge on becoming comical if pursued to its extreme. What the viewers feel in response to these images is entirely up to them. In reality, there are people who feel frightened, and then there are others who simply laugh.

AUTHOR: Is there a point where fashion, pop culture, and art intersect, and is an exploration of that crossroad something that interests you?

Tomoo: regardless of whether it is good or bad, there is such a thing as art-like fashion, and conversely there is fashion-like art. I have produced numerous designs for t-shirts over the years, yet I am not interested in this crossover at all. In my mind, I consider (art and fashion) to be entirely different things. For example, if I transfer an image from my painting as it is onto a t-shirt, honestly speaking, it looks unfashionable. There are certain patterns and designs that are best suited for t-shirts, and this is precisely where I perceive the boundary between art and fashion to exist.

AUTHOR: What for you is the ultimate meaning of style?

Tomoo: I can’t say that I know much about the fashion industry, but one day in the streets of Tokyo I came across an abnormally cool-looking guy standing about twenty meters ahead of me. I found everything to be perfect from the color of his clothes, their form, and his hairstyle. I thought to myself, “Who is this guy!?” and I approached him to get a closer look only to discover that he was simply a filthy homeless man with a foul stench surrounding him. I don’t know why he had appeared perfect to me, and I feel that this very mystery itself is what I consider to be the ultimate sense of ‘style’.

AUTHOR: As an individual how do you differentiate between style and aesthetic? Which, for you, is the more authentic?

Tomoo: This is a really difficult question! No one’s ever asked me anything like this before! It’s hard to explain, but I think those who appropriate a particular style as a means for expressing their thoughts also seem to possess an aesthetic. you could say they are two sides of the same coin. I have no idea which one is more authentic. As an artist, I seek “beauty” day-to-day in all the works that I produce. I don’t consider myself to have succeeded if there isn’t even the slightest section or aspect of the work that I feel to be ‘beautiful’.

AUTHOR: Why is your art so often in the figurative vein? What do you seek to say about the female condition and the male gaze in your portraits?

Tomoo: I don’t know why, but I am drawn to this sense of “fabricated glamour” that is seen in figures such as showgirls and bunny girls. I suppose another reason for my fascination is due to the fact that I’ve been sifting through the pages of Playboy magazines since I was a child (laughs). I have, in fact, produced many abstract paintings, but I don’t exhibit them much because they tend to embody this sense of déjà vu, and end up looking like the works of someone else. Is there anything in particular that I seek to communicate? Truth be told, there isn’t.

AUTHOR: Does the process of painting itself guide the outcome, or do you have a set intention? how do you ‘feel’ when you are working?

Tomoo: I do to some extent have a blueprint within my mind. however, I often don’t succeed in completing the work according to plan. Most of the time the work develops in unexpected ways due to various accidents along the process, and the result is something that’s completely different from the initial blueprint. I’ve recently been referring to these various accidental occurrences as, “lucky accidents” and they are something that I welcome. during the actual process of painting, I am in a complete state of ‘nothingness’ – it’s a strange sensation as if my entire body has become a vacuum.

AUTHOR: If you can think of one artist or artwork, that inspired you more than any other in your lifetime what would it be and why?

Tomoo: There are so many artists who have inspired me that it would be impossible for me to list them all here. Wait! Although he’s not strictly speaking an artist, I have been greatly inspired by the professional wrestler Antonio Inoki. I’m not joking when I say this, but for me, Antonio Inoki as he used to be in the ’70s-’80s, was the greatest artist in the world.

CREDITS

Interview by JOHN-PAUL PRYOR

Pictures created exclusively to author magazine by Takaishi gallery

I Don´t Like You Very Much”-Monica Bonvicini

Monica Bonvicini's exhibition for Kunsthaus Graz is centered on themes at the core of the artist’s research: an examination of architecture, literature, and the construction of sexual and gender identity. Following the show at OGR in Turin, the large-scale architectural sculpture "As Walls Keep Shifting" is presented in Graz in a state of complete but calculated disaster. Further works on view are the new neon work "Love Never Win" (2022), the video work "I See a White and Blue Building" (2020), the carpet installation "Breach of Décor" (2020), and the photo series "Italian Homes" (2019). The question of home, commodity, desire, and sex is continued in the new work "You to Me", treating elements of fetish as sculptural and performative objects that invite the public – within the institutional context of the museum – to live out the voyeurism that is intrinsic to all museum visits.

Photo Credits: GALERIE KRINZINGER

Marina Abramovic: Two Hearts

We present a series of images by Art´s most infamous provocateur

She may be the ‘godmother of performance art, but Marina Abramović is anything but a motherly figure, with her confronting works as controversial as they are conflicting. Her name is now synonymous with pushing one’s physical, mental, and psychological limits, the Serbian-born artist has courted her notoriety with ruthless performances that deal with trauma, sacrifice, death, obsession, free will, and fear, primarily sold to her directly through self-induced suffering, her best-known works leaving her own body scarred. In this extract from our extended feature in AUTHOR, we bring images from her retrospective exhibition, Two Hearts, which continues her dismemberment of society’s ideal of life and death, and the kind of morality that envelopes either state.

Text by MICHAELA WILLIAMS
Pictures courtesy of Marina Abramović, Archives, and Galerie Krinzinger

Portraits of an Urban Landscape: Daido Moriyama

AUTHOR TAKES A WANDER INTO THE GHOSTLY NEON-SOAKED IMAGINATION OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST EVOCATIVE VISUAL ARTISTS

There is a poem entitled “Epilogue” in Les Fleurs Du Malby the decadent 18th-century French poet Baudelairethat ends with the line “courtesans and pimps, you often offer pleasures the vulgar mob will never understand”. It’s an ironic, anti-establishment sentiment that has a no better visual parallel in the 21st century than in the celebrated work of much-lauded Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. In fact, it could be said of Moriyama that he is the Honoré Daumier of our era, capturing dispossessed outsider souls adrift in the all-enveloping urban sprawl of Tokyo through the open eye of his lens; asking us, by proxy, to stare into the neon-soaked gutter, between the cracks of capitalist artifice, to find something truly eternal; something pertaining to questions of dissolution, decadence and, ultimately, decay.

While some photographers intend to create a fantasy of reality, particularly in the vastly retouched spectrum of fashion photography, Moriyama reminds us that reality is itself simply a temporal fantasy of the individual – a smoke and mirrors dream machine of perceptive apparatus married to external stimuli over which we have little or no control. There is, as a direct result, nothing directional or explicit in a Moriyamaimage – he is not asking us to look at anything from a particular perspective, rather, he is inviting us to view reality in the flux of perpetually fleeting stasis, and he finds no better place to train his eye on humanity than upon the seediest and least celebrated of urban twilights.

The exclusive images AUTHOR presents here were all shot in the strangely decadent Tokyo district of Shinjuku, and were among the first of his color works to ever be exhibited, debuting at The Fondation Cartier to enormous critical acclaim. While they are a graphic departure from his stark monochromatic style, they contain the same cinematic, haunting quality as his earlier works. Somewhat reminiscent of the classic dystopian science-fiction classic Blade Runner, they serve as a color-soaked reminder that the machinations of capitalist progress are moving exponentially faster than we can possibly fathom and that the resulting decadent squalor is a fascinating product of the machine. In a sense, then, they are photographs, not only of the present, but also of the future – matching urban decay with spiritual malaise, and pertaining to some deep anxiety we all share on a fundamental level, but shall never quite find the time to understand.

Text by: John-Paul Pryor

Pictures Courtesy of the Artist / Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Zhang Wei

The Colors of Emotions and The Emotions of Colors

In Zhang Wei’s second solo presentation in Galerie Krinzinger, he is showcasing a selection of 20 works, made between 2016 and 2022. Among them, three were painted in 2022, all unmistakably pointing toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Using the colors from Ukraine's national flag, Zhang Wei covered a large expanse of each canvas in blue. In the Ukrainian flag, blue denotes the skies over the vast land. On both of Zhang Wei’s canvases, the blue colors occupied nearly two-thirds of the canvas on the upper side, meticulously and evenly painted in most parts and hard-edged. In one of them, titled “Z-AC2202”, he painted a smear of yellow from the Ukrainian flag on the lower edge of the blue paint. Much of the blue area is solid while the yellow paint is solid on the upper half and sketchy on its lower part. In the second Ukraine-specific work “Z-AC2203”, the yellow color appears splashed onto the lower edge of the blue sky, much in disarray.

Such an approach brought to mind an experiment he carried out in the early 1980s. As he was exploring ways to steer away from figurative representation of the landscape paintings he was making in the 1970s, Zhang Wei once climbed on a ladder and from the point of about 4 meters high, he dropped a basin of paint onto the canvas so that the paint was splashed all over, not just on his canvas but inside of his room. The uncontrollable effect of this action was actually a desirable outcome and the pursuit of such an effect continues in his subsequent works. He looks for and enacts processes that lead to uncontainable manifestations. For instance, he has in recent years, tried painting with his motorbike. He’s poured a bucket of paint onto his canvas and ridden motorbikes over it, leaving tire marks on it. Sometimes, he runs toy cars across his canvas through a remote control. All efforts aspire for playfulness and dynamism in his works.

The third piece that reconfigures the Ukrainian flag is “Z-AC2204”, a rice paper book album painted in oil, interweaving blue strokes of blue with yellow ones, one intersecting another in a riotous and vigorous way. A familiar format in traditional Chinese paintings, the book album opens into a long stretch of the horizontal scroll that gives generous space for the unfolding of Zhang Wei’s playing with blue and yellow. While compact and quiet in a folded form, the album is an elaborate and dynamic symphony when it is opened up to reveal its many surprises and energy on the pages. Zhang Wei has also painted onto folded paper fans. Like the paper album, the curves of these folded surfaces dissect and intersect Zhang Wei’s strokes and enhance the dramatic sense of change in their flows.

Zhang Wei is forthright about his empathy with Ukraine and its people under war. Since its outbreak, the war in Ukraine has caused enormous rifts among members of both the Chinese public and its artistic and intellectual communities. Some were even hesitant to call it an invasion, aligning with the Chinese government’s pro-Russia position and rhetoric. Being an unwavering liberal, Zhang Wei has felt compelled to articulate his position on the matter through his paintings. This series of new works lends a valuable perspective into understanding Zhang Wei’s practice beyond that of purely formalistic exploration. The critical distance from any form of authority and hegemony underlines Zhang Wei’s artistic career, as well as his philosophy of life. As early as 1976 (or 1977), Zhang Wei took to heart a translated book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by American writer Richard Bach. In it, Bach wrote about a seagull flying high and free despite odds and mockery. This story showed Zhang Wei how to live and handle art in a free and personal way. Zhang Wei identified strongly with the courageous seagull in the perpetual quest for freedom and was unperturbed by any obstacle that comes along the way. This book was among the major influences on his way of living and working as an artist before he took the chance of participating in a show in New York to leave Beijing and live in the States in the following two decades from 1986 to 2005. There, he resisted the idea of following his gallerist’s advice to plan his artistic career and rather stood by the human spirit which he deemed far more important than becoming a successful artist.

This liberal and humanistic outlook towards life and art is a consistent and inherent aspect that upholds the tension and relevance of Zhang Wei’s artistic practice towards the varied social and political contexts that he’s lived through. He’s always engaged in some dialogue about the issues at hand. In the early 1970s, the choice of making Plein-en-air paintings and impressionistic landscapes distanced him from the dogma of socialist realist art of the time. At the beginning of the 1980s, his further dive into abstraction afforded him a space for self-expression and artistic freedom. In the wake of the Intellectual Liberation (Xixiang Jiefang) Campaign after the end of the Cultural Revolution, there was less control and more room for free thinking in Chinese society. It was then that older artists took the opportunity to champion stylistic diversity and formal exploration as an outlet for artistic autonomy. Younger artists in and out of art academies at the time pursued faithful figurative depictions of non-heroic characters, events, and aspects of everyday reality such as rural life, in defiance of the idealized rendering of subject matters in socialist realism. Zhang Wei and some of his like-minded artist friends such as Wang Luyan and Zhu Jinshi looked for freedom by painting in abstract forms.

In the 1970s, when Zhang Wei was making landscape paintings with members of the No Name Group, a loose group of Beijing-based artists who continuously and voluntarily painted impressionistic landscapes and still lifes instead of political propaganda throughout the Cultural Revolution, he had recognized that he didn’t care too much about details like what could be seen in realistic paintings. It was Zhao Wenliang, a core member of the group, who taught him to finish a work with some well-placed strokes, and just to leave space unpainted and open in a painting. In one of their many excursions of painting outdoors together, Zhang Wei was struggling with depicting the trees in his painting. Zhao Wenliang walked over and finished it in seconds. Zhao’s ability to summarize a subject matter into succinct and lively artistic expressions captured Zhang Wei’s fascination before he encountered the canon of abstract art as defined in Western art history. Only in 1981, when a show of American paintings opened in the National Museum in Beijing, Zhang Wei laid his eyes on some original paintings of major American abstract painters. When visiting the show, he was most amazed by Helen Frankenthaler’s big strokes in one color, Morris Louis’ paintings that looked washed with drippings, Franz Kline’s calligraphy-like black paintings, as well as Pollock’s stretched paintings. The last left a compelling impression. It looked as if it was done without thinking and full of nonstop actions, which is how Zhang Wei likes to work too, pressing on without interruption until he’s exhausted all his energy.

Such exposure aside, Zhang Wei actually attributed his awakening and approaches to abstraction to Chinese ink-wash painters such as Qi Baishi and Xu Wei, both celebrated for their artistic expressiveness. “My idea about freedom of painting was at the beginning based on Qi Baishi, on Xu Wei even. Xu Wei lived in the Ming Dynasty. When he painted running donkeys, it was crazy! He painted the legs and the hooves disconnected! It’s empty in between to show movement!”1 Such a realization that those so-called traditional figurative artists knew to leave something out was a memorable lesson for him. Such ingenious artistic precedents with their mastery of depiction through creating blankness convinced Zhang Wei that a painting doesn’t need to be “finished”.

Just as blankness on a canvas is expressive in emotion and meaning, so is color. Color is not a cover of something or a stylistic device, but the substance in itself. It contains expression as well as significance. Zhang Wei even equates color to people he likes and to himself: “I think color alone already carries a lot of things, especially your personality. In truth, it is about the choice of colors – which ones mean something to you, with which you are related to. It’s like a mirror: when I choose a color, it’s like I am choosing things in daily life. I talk to people, I am dealing with people; it’s like meeting someone, intuitively. I like the person, and if I’d like to see the person again I keep using the same color in another painting. To me, color is just myself.”

When learning to paint landscapes outdoors with senior members of the No Name Group such as Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, Zhang Wei liked to put all kinds of colors on his painting boards. “Even on rainy, grey days, I put a lot of different colors together.”3 Unlike the grey and brown tones that populated the Soviet-influenced school of oil paintings from the 1950s, members of the No Name Group talked about the use of colors, especially the application of subtle and light tones, such as the inclusion of very light blue to lighten up a painting, which would otherwise appear dark and dull. Through these exercises and discussions, Zhang Wei found a way to liberate the beauty of colors from their fixed associations with political connotations. “So red was not just Chairman Mao’s color anymore, a red flag or the Red Book.” With all the colors on his board, he found the expression of a colorful world and life through them. Colors became free, and so did the artist, from dogmatic disciplines of painting as confined by ideological boundaries.

Zhang Wei’s fixation on color is also rooted in one of his early work experiences. From 1978, he worked as a stage designer for Kunqu, a 500-year-old school of Chinese opera that originated from Suzhou in Jiangsu Province in East China. There, he saw how the actors painted their faces in all kinds of colors, an abstract form that personified specific roles in the stories, with their distinctive temperaments, characters, and positions. With the application of color onto each actor’s face, the same face could carry very different personalities and meanings. He thus thought to himself, the way colors are painted carries meaning. “And if you exchange the face with a canvas, then it becomes an abstract painting!”

As such, making a painting for Zhang Wei is primarily about choosing a color first. “The first thing that comes out from my mind is color and I go with that; that color comes with a light touch on the canvas. With that color comes the shape at the same time. And then I naturally think about another color. And so the process goes on automatically without thinking.” Color determines the shapes he makes on a canvas, and leads to the choices of tools, and approaches he would take to realize a work. Color is thus not just a formal tool, but the starting point of everything and the expression of meanings and emotions. The group of 24 works in this exhibition conjures up a rich spectrum of not only the vibrant colors in Zhang Wei’s paintings but of his strokes and brushwork, relevant to the application of different colors. Sometimes, he uses broad strokes, sometimes, it’s slapping colors directly onto canvases. In any case, colors are both the embodiments of his emotions, as well as his positions in life.

In addition, this assembly of works bears witness to a period of time spanning before and after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic across the world. There is no question that the world has become a profoundly different place ever since. Yet the possibility that the works of Zhang Wei can travel beyond the national border and have a place to be seen by an audience far and beyond speaks volumes about the possibility of art transcending differences manufactured by national politics, set free to fly high, just as Jonathan the Seagull.

Zhang Wei was born in 1952 in Beijing, In 1986 he moved to New York and since 2005 he is living and working in Beijing again. Zhang Wei is deemed one of the first avant-garde abstract painters in China. He began his career in the 1970s as part of the underground artist group—Wuming (No Name). Zhang adhered to the group’s ideals in pursuit of an independent and unique artistic style apart from the politically ordained and thus established art forms at the time. In the early ’80s, impacted by the encounters with western Abstract Expressionism, Zhang unearthed a fresh perspective on his own artistic process, delving into the form of abstraction in order to engender a singular abstract language expressing the ineffable power of artistic freedom. Zhang’s paintings echo the instinctive immediacy of action painting and their “style-as-substance” approach alludes to a profound connection to traditional Chinese ink and calligraphy. The texture of his brushwork reveals a thorough modernity that stresses on the emotional significance of colors and the cathartic experience of both the creator and viewer of these works. Zhang’s works are collected globally including Art Institute of Chicago, M+ Museum (Hong Kong) and Stiftung zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Kunst, Germany.

His most important exhibitions include Salon Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile – Focus China. Works from Collection Wemhöner, Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, Germany, 2021, Kunst in Weidinger, Germany, 2019, MA Beijing Perspective, Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, 2017, Secret Signs: Calligraphy in Chinese Contemporary Art, DeichtorHallen, Hamburg, Germany, 2014, Right is Wrong / Four Decades of Chinese Art from the M+ Sigg Collection, Bildmuseet Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, 2014, Blooming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974-1985, China Institute Gallery, New York, USA, 2011.

Artist: Zhang Wei

Images courtesy of GALERIE KRINZINGER

Text by Carol Yinghua Lu

Double exposure - The Douglas Brothers

THE ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHY DUO INVITE YOU TO TAKE A LONG JOURNEY INTO THE SPACE BETWEEN DREAMS, TO RECOVER A LOST ARCHIVE OF THE SOUL

DIAGRAM OF DESIRE, Clerkenwell, London, 1993

There are certain images that seem to emanate directly from the shadowlands of the subconscious, those images of an opaque, surreal nature that remind us our daily existence is still nothing more than a kind of waking dream. It could, of course, be argued that this is the ultimate purpose of artistic endeavor of any kind, a process seeking to connect us with the deeper, intangible truth of being in an absurd, temporal universe that’s bookended only by a journey into darkness. In this paradigm, where meaning and purpose are inextricably linked to the creative drive to rage against the dying of the light, the Douglas Brothers stand apart. While their name is known mainly in industry circles, the brothers are considered

peerless as a photography duo, known for creating dreamlike excursions into the surreal landscape of identity that holds a significant candle to the iconic painterly deconstructions of geniuses, such as Salvador Dali, and Francis Bacon. If this sounds somewhat like hyperbole, you only need to look to an early interview in the early 90s Eye magazine, to understand that this journey into the subconscious was precisely their intention, the duo stated in no uncertain terms that their work was to be a reaction to the ‘pin-sharp, pristine and sterile photography’ pervasive in portraiture and fashion at that time: “We were pushing blur to see how far you could go, to see how little information the brain need to make a picture.”

ADRENALIN, Clerkenwell, London, 1992

It is no understatement to say that this undertaking of Andrew and Stuart Douglas made them responsible for some of the most iconic underground portraiture of the early-90s, capturing some of the most celebrated cultural provocateurs of their generation in the dark eye of their lens. Famously, they shot one of the very first, and most haunting, portraits of actor Daniel Day-Lewis. However, it is often remarked that the light that burns the brightest burns the shortest, and in regard to the Douglas Brothers it is an aphorism that rings true. Early into their promising career, the siblings fell out with near Shakespearean fervor, not speaking to each other for some 20 years. During this prolonged period of enmity, the brothers, almost wilfully, mislaid a huge body of work. It was the almost miraculous discovery of these long-lost prints in a discarded refuse container in London’s King’s Cross three years ago that finally brought them back together, subsequently witnessing the work be placed in the permanent collection at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The finding of a long-lost archive is, of course, a narrative with an epic sweep, but while the fourteen portraits that now hang in the National Portrait Gallery are important cultural artifacts, they were not the only works discovered in the chance excavation in King’s Cross. Among the haul recovered from the brink of destruction were also a number of deeply surreal works that exemplified the strange ruminations on being that resolutely underpin the ghostly portraits for which the brothers are now celebrated. On the following pages, AUTHOR is privileged to now present a number of those lesser-known gems, taking you on a journey into being and nothingness where gentle shadows churn through dreams, in the gold-edged veils of night.

CREDITS

by John-Paul Pryor

Alchemy as photography - PHILIP POCOCK

Infinite Emptiness Will Be All Around You, 1989

THE MASTER OF FLUID LIGHT AND MOLTEN METALS, PHILIP POCOCK HAS MADE THE CIBACHROME TECHNIQUE HIS OWN, WITH HIS PSYCHEDELICALLY SURREAL EXPOSURES AN ILLUSION COME TO LIFE. WRITING AS HIS OWN CRITIC, HERE HE HOLDS A MIRROR UP TO HIS ART

The Currents Will Carry Us Away, 1989

Philip Pocock has “untied photography from its initial mission to produce a mirror of recognisable objects. He produces photography as such, photography pure, opening it to new vistas in a brilliant interplay of forms and colors, each specimen granting hallucinatory journeys into the new. His imaginations prove the inexhaustible richness of mastered craft and conjured fantasy.”

– Prof. Dr. L. Fritz Gruber, Gruber Collection, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany

The Ring to Sing, 1989

“This alchemy as photography works by Berlin-based Canadian artist Philip Pocock poses a timely question: Is hallucination a valid form of perception? Cyberspace author William Gibson thought so. He coined ‘cyberspace’ as a ‘consensual hallucination shared daily by millions. Also working as a digital artist, Pocock is aware of this virtual reality. Still his love of photography as material led him to experiment with the Swiss Cibachrome deluxe photographic material for its real silver shadows and patinas, and the purest, psychedelic clothing color dyes on the planet.

He produces phantasmic portraits of the photograph itself–a polished surface with a true sense of 3D; molecules of silver coagulating, interacting with the color pigments exploding in bursts, streaming, rivulets of chemicals etching out other hues and tones. The Cibachromes appear to possess both an atomic microscopic and dizzying astronomical scale. The photograph becomes a painting of a photograph in the act of becoming itself. No light, no optical image, Philip Pocock paints these works in full daylight.”

CREDITS

by PHILIP POCOCK

All images courtesy of Philip Pocock and INDA Gallery