Issue No. 2:
Photography (2020)
The public viewing the photos at the first Nature, Society, and Man exhibition in the Orchid Room, Zhongshan Park, Beijing 1979.
Guan Kan is a journal dedicated to thinking about contemporary art made by Chinese artists. While the first issue, focuses on performance, Issue no. 2 takes photography as its subject. Artists use photography to critique and document life in contemporary China and rethink its history. Essays in this issue address how photography has developed and its primary currents within contemporary Chinese art. This issue has a focus on Wang Qingsong, as well as essays on contemporary artists Shao Yinong and Muchen.
Pictures and Perspectives: The contemporary photography of Wang Qingsong, Muchen and Shao Yinong
Photography became an important medium for the expression and documentation of personal histories in China, and often a means for oblique social criticism. The contemporary photography of Wang Qingsong, Muchen and Shao Yinong is imbued with this history. This essay traces the evolution of Chinese photography and critical discourse in the late 1970s to interpret the contemporary work of these artists.
Photography: Socio-political criticism in Contemporary Chinese art
Photography has, over the last two decades, proven to be a tactical vehicle for criticism of the tedious socio-political condition of Chinese society. Communist China’s increasingly large place in the global capitalist market, and the local repercussions of consumerist Western influence fuel the criticism and satire of artists such as Wang Qingsong, and Muchen and Shao Yingong.
Wang Qingsong as journalist and social critic
Wang Qingsong uses applied photography as a way to respond to the rapidly changing society, repeatedly stressing that he is a ‘journalist’, arguing that the news does not just stay on the surface, but also functions in a more essential way. Working with exaggerated content and shocking, spectacular scenes, Wang reflects social issues. His work arranges details within complicated, large images, as just one image can deliver the impact of a whole issue.