-- Artist statement
In this project I use my two-meter height in a wide variation of media. Beside photography there are light boxes, magazines, video stills, banners and performances. The handwritten work statement lays the foundation that the project is build on. It declares stardom in five basic sentences with an almost childish spirit: “When I walk on the streets of Beijing I feel like a celebrity. Many people look at me. This I want to use for my new project. My goal: to become a real Chinese celebrity before graduation. Today I start.” . The essence underneath this statement is an emotional desire for acceptance within a new environment, a search for identity and a definition of reality. (Extract of the introduction text of the book Lu Xiaoben by writer Yang Lin).
Beijing based photographer and curator Ruben Lundgren graduated from the University of the Arts Utrecht in 2005 and moved to China where he finished his masters degree photography at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He made a name within the conceptual photography duo WassinkLundgren with publications as Empty Bottles (2007) and Tokyo Tokyo (2010). FOAM showed a retrospect of their work in 2013.
He now works as a photojournalist for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and as an independent curator of Chinese photography. Together with Martin Parr he co-edited The Chinese Photobook (2015) and with Timothy Prus he published MeNu (2018) a tasty collection of Chinese vernacular food photography. As a guest curator of BredaPhoto 2020 he curated China Imagined offering 24 contemporary photography projects from China including the sticker album Wow Taobao.
Photographs are collected by various private and public collections and have also been exhibited at international galleries and museums including FOAM photography museum (Amsterdam), The Archive of Modern Conflict (London) and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (Beijing).
More information: www.rubenlundgren.com
