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The exhibition “La clairvoyance du hasard” - held at the Mougins Center of Photography (France) - gathers the works of Li Lang and Yuki Onodera.
La clairvoyance du hasard: Li Lang + Yuki Onodera
La clairvoyance du hasard
Is photography merely the outcome of the various procedures and technical equipment employed in its production? Is a deterministic functioning of the mechanical image guaranteed by optics, chemistry, and now digital technology? It seems that nothing can escape automatism. If one is convinced of the pre-eminence of its mechanical functioning the photograph would ultimately be simply the meeting between the decisions of the photographer and the technical feasibility of the camera. However, for many photographers, belief in the potential of recording the clues of the world remains firmly anchored in the usage of the medium.
If we accept that nothing is given to be seen, that the event is an object forever eluding us, how do we escape the contradiction between determination and chance? In the vast reservoir of potential images accumulated throughout their experience, the photographer draws upon and selects from a heterogenic set of affinities that often express the same preoccupations. Creative imagination nourishes itself from a hunt for unintentional effects, in no way desired, from the distortion between the original project and its outcome. This proves, if needs be, the complexity of phenomena that one single image cannot resume.
A Long Day of A Certain Year - Li Lang
“Every generation lives like this. A long day in a life is a definite, precise time; it is not a moment that ends up becoming, in our memory, part of an infinite series of anonymous ‘yesterdays’. Today and tomorrow are as well part of a ‘long day in a life’, and through endless repetition they will end up being our whole life. I took a round trip on a high-speed train traveling for 4,600-kilometres and shot the view out of the window in the manner of taking statistical sampling of the journey through this familiar and yet unfamiliar country that is China, through cities, towns, countryside, hills, plains and the wilderness.
Looking numbly out of the window, the landscape rushed against the direction of the train, 6 and then disappeared behind. I suddenly had the illusion that the future is ahead and is embodied by the movement. Without this awareness, the future would be a thing of the past. Paradoxically, it seems to me that the present is non-existent. Only when the train finally arrives at the terminus, I walk out of the carriage and feel the present existence and the reality of my having to go back to the departure point. What is reality?” — Li Lang
Born in Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province in 1969, Li Lang began his career as a photographer in 1990. He currently lives and works in Chengdu. Through his images, Lang has often explored humanity and desires. Photography serves as a trigger for the awakening of a long-suppressed self. Lang captures real life events with calmness and precision. He draws inspiration from and includes in his work the life experience of others, with the aim of obtaining more diversified existential experience of ourselves, of others and of life. Lang creates an intangible relationship between people and photography, and makes us think about the relationship between modernity and photography.
Lang has won The Punctum Award at Lianzhou Foto Festival (China, 2019), the Special Jury Prize (Lianzhou, China, 2015), the top prize of Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography Awards and “The Mother Jones Medal of Excellence” (1998), and his works have been collected by many institutions including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (USA), Shanghai Art Museum (China), the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (Spain), Guangdong Museum of Art (China), LUXELAKES A4 Art Museum (Chengdu, China), White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney, Australia). The exhibition at the Mougins Center of Photography is his first show in France.
Darkside of the Moon - Yuki Onodera
For Darkside of the Moon her acts of creation included collage, painting, photogram processes, and drip painting. The know of the far side of the Moon, but facing away from the Earth, it remains always dark to us, invisible to our eyes. Humans have been gazing at and contemplating the Moon since ancient times, and it has played a formative role in many aspects of culture and civilization. We now recognize that the Moon is spherical, but still seem to behave as if the yellowish globe we see in the night sky were a flat disk. The idea of flying to the invisible side of the Moon and having a robot run around on the surface sounds like a story from a novel. In the Darkside of the Moon triptychs, part of each scene has been cut out and then put back into one of the other scenes as a collage. These works call to mind “the beginning and the end of the universe”, suggesting the possibility of being able to flip a different universe through wormholes, a concept based on the multiverse model of the universe. — Takayo Iida, for the exhibition “2021 A Space Odyssey Monolith: Memory as Virus – Beyond the New Dark Age”, Gyre Gallery, Tokyo, 2021.
Twin Birds - Yuki Onodera
In the beginning, I had two pieces of wood of the same length. Like twins. I gave them a name. One is called “Red”, the other one is called “Blue”. Then, I made Red stand and Blue lie down. And I took a picture of them. First photo of the twins’ birth. This is the starting point. Then I put another piece of wood, as an addition to each one of them and I start to realize that they look different. I take one more picture. Then again, I add a third piece of wood to each, I take a new photo and so on. Change occurs as a result of continuous and simultaneous repetition. The simple piece of wood from the origins creates a more and more complex structure. The two objects start to differentiate from one another. Transition of an object to another is accomplished by the rigorous process of reiteration. There is no established plan, as there would have been one for an architectural structure or a sculpture. There is no prior concept, nor state of completion either. In other words, I have no idea where this is going. Chance binds itself to chance in order to move forward indefinitely. Which image is superimposed then? Writings? Some characters? Some animals? Some constructions? Does growing up in a culture with an ideogrammatic writing style naturally induced the pieces of wood I work with to become written Chinese characters (hanzi)? The standing piece of wood stands for 1 in Arabic numeral. The lying piece of wood stands for 1 in hanzi. I recognize hanzi in the objects that appeared then: 人 (a person), 大 (big), 上 (above), 中 (middle), 山 (mountains), 木 (a tree), 本 (a book, or the origin), 体 (the body)… There is no definitive way of presenting this body of work. The collection of photographs is a simple database. How to display them? Their installation itself is a process.
Born in Tokyo in 1962, Yuki Onodera sets up her studio in Paris in 1993 and has since then exhibited her work around the world. Onodera questions the role of photography: what it is and what it can do. This thought leads her to an unusual practice that ultimately goes beyond the framework of “simple” photography. Onodera plays with the medium by inserting a marble into the camera, or travels to the other side of the Earth to take photos based on a story constructed by a news broadcast or a legend. Acknowledged for her original and hand-made work (manual prints on large silver paper, drip painting on black and white prints), her works are present in numerous collections and museums throughout the world (Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, etc). Her main monographic exhibitions took place at the National Museum of Art in Osaka (2005), the Shanghai Art Museum (2006), the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2010, “Yuki Onodera: Into the Labyrinth of Photography”), the Seoul Museum of Photography (2010) and the Mus e Nic phore Ni pce of Chalon-sur-Sa ne (2011, “Yuki Onodera, La photographie en apesanteur”). She also received the Ihe Kimura Prize (2003, Japan) and the Ni pce Prize (2006, France).
About the Mougins Center of Photography
The Mougins Center of Photography is an institution dedicated to still and moving images whose aim is to promote and exhibit the multiple trends of contemporary photography. Open to photographic modernity in all its forms, this municipal structure contributes to the culture and tourism policies pursued by the town of Mougins, as well as performing regional outreach and international communication activities. From its opening on July 3rd 2021, its mission is to support the creation and experimentations of artists of all profiles: from France or overseas, up-and-coming or established. This support takes various forms including producing, exhibiting, publishing and residencies. Other local authorities in the Provence-Alpes-C te d’Azur region (PACA), including those of Marseille and Nice, are already demonstrating a dynamic approach to photography by way of varied exhibitions or thanks to proactive publishing houses and diverse residency programs. The Mougins Center of Photography will complement these activities by providing a similar service for contemporary photography.
More information:
La clairvoyance du hasard: Li Lang + Yuki Onodera
Curators: François Cheval and Yasmine Chemali
Dates: 26.02 to 22.05. 2022
Venue: Centre de la photographie de Mougins, 43 rue de l’église 06250 Mougins (France)
centrephotographiemougins.com
