Yang Fudong — Marian Goodman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 26 → April 2, 2011

Marian Goodman presents its fourth exhibition of work by Chinese artist Yang Fudong. The gallery is showing its most recent multichannel film Fifth Night and a serie of seven black and white photographs entitled International Hotel.

International Hotel was inspired by popular images of swimmers at the pool side during competitions. The artist staged these moments of waiting, joy and rest with models around the Art Deco pool of the International Hotel in Shanghai. For him the series is like a film with each photo representing a scene. The environment, make-up and allure of the girls evoke the Chinese “modern women” as seen in advertisements, calendars, film posters before the Second World War, which contributed to the feminine emancipation. Just like the women of this period, the models in the photographs smile at the camera and pretend to react to an action taking place beyond the lens. Yang Fudong captures the complex issues that confront young women in contemporary China.

Fifth Night is a video installation composed of seven synchronized projections depicting the streets of Shanghai’s old town at night. In the middle of the studio, a stage has been constructed, a tramway is being repaired and different unrelated characters appear. The artist uses seven cameras which film the same scene from seven different angles, with variations of scale, depths of field and tracks of movement. The artist has used a technique he calls “multiple views film” and what the viewer could perceive as separate instances, are actually simultaneously tied together into one scene which complete our usual way of seeing things. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the characters’ expressions, rendering even the simplest actions monumental. The artist is interested by the beauty which appears by chance; and with the multiple views of the camera he captures the grace and subtle reactions of the actors. The work questions reality, our perception and our relationship with time.