For its fifth participation at PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai, the Three Shadows +3 Gallery (booth D24) will bring this year the latest works from Chinese artists Shao Wenhuan 邵文欢 and Zhang Kechun 张克纯.
Shao Wenhuan was born in Hotan, Xinjiang in 1971. In 2002 he enrolled in a graduate program for painting at the Chinese Academy of Art. During this time he also traveled to France to study at the National Superior School of Art in Dijon. After completing his degree, Shao remained at the Chinese Academy of Arts as an Associate Professor. He lives and works in Hangzhou.
It is easy to get absorbed into the worlds of Shao’s images. Photography is very much at the center, but he manages to conjure destabilized realities and alternate existences all the same. In works like Wings of a Phoenix Bird, the multidimensional rips of aluminum showcase Shao’s break from a single, black-and-white, subjective or objective worldview in his photography. It is not necessarily a rethinking of image consciousness (that is, the way the image acts as a mirror) he strives for, but this rethinking of space.
Zhang Kechun was born in 1980, Sichun, currently works and lives in Chengdu. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions at domestic and international contemporary art institutions. Zhang Kechun won the National Geographic Picks Global Prize in 2008, the Daylight Photo Award and the Arles Photo Festival Discovery Award in 2014. He was nominated by the Three Shadow Photo Award in 2012, Sony World Photography Awards in 2012 and 2013, and by the Prix HSBC Pour la Photographie in 2014.
Zhang Kechun is best known for his large format photographs of post-industrial Chinese landscapes. He produces epic vistas that dwell on the significance of the landscape in modern Chinese national identity. Mountains and rivers are always the heaviest carriers of Chinese people’s affection. The continental cultural awareness of making a sightseeing tour, the inherent cultivation consciousness of “mountains being virtuous, rivers being moral”, and the sense of visual illusion of a short distance away are always the main line of interpreting Mountains and waters. In his latest series China, he makes a new attempt. In additional to the landscape of mountains and rivers, he extends his focus on social group.
ABOUT THE GALLERYThree Shadows +3 Gallery, a new independent art space founded by Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Caochangdi, first seeks to act as a channel for promoting Chinese Contemporary photography, past and present, and keeping its doors open to the future of the medium. It aims to provide a professional model for promoting and guiding China’s homegrown artists, and offer opportunities to the public to better understand and recognize the excellent photography produced in China. To this end, +3 Gallery aims to foster the further development of informed collecting of photography in China.
While its main focus is on Chinese photography, Three Shadows +3 Gallery is also committed to showcasing outstanding photography from abroad. Through collaborations with international art spaces and fairs, Three Shadows +3 Gallery is working towards expanding the audience for these photographs at home, while also increasing Chinese photography’s exposure in other regions of the world.
More information: PHOTOFAIRS | ShanghaiFrom September 21-23, 2018Shanghai Exhibition Center No. 655 Changhua Road Jing'an District, Shanghaiwww.photofairs.org
