Video: Life in Photograms: Zhang Dali's World's Shadows Exhibition
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The work of one of the most promising contemporary artists in China, Zhang Dali, for the most part develops around the rapid changes in the urban environment and the daily life of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. The new series of works by the artist "World's Shadows" is a creative experiment with the ancient method of photo printing, cyanotopy.
Zhang Dali is known to the general public primarily as the author of the "Demolition" project, during which Zhang made numerous "holes" in the form of a silhouette of a human head in construction fences, fences and walls of dilapidated buildings. The project was conceived as a tacit protest against Beijing's violent modernization and the destruction of ancient traditions.
The concept of the World's Shadows exhibition is formulated in the same vein: “The main theme of my work is our everyday life in its most diverse aspects, shown from a very realistic perspective,” says Dali. “Essentially, they are shadows of reality. I would like to preserve all the impressions of human life."
One of the reasons why the artist has turned to the long-obsolete method of monochrome photographic printing is that the popularization of modern digital technology and the widespread abuse of graphic editors deprive us of the ability to draw the line between the real and the virtual. The second reason is the information boom that swept the whole world in the twenty-first century. We are constantly in a fast and aggressive flow of information, but the source of this information is never flawlessly accurate, and is often prone to exaggeration. Finally, as artists become more and more dependent on digital technology, locking themselves in their studios and giving the reins to the not always bona fide hands of art managers and producers, they lose touch with real life and real creativity.
Photographic technology used by Zhang Dali for more than a century and a half. He makes photograms (images obtained by a photochemical method, without the use of a camera) on large canvases of cotton canvas, impregnated with a special solution. The object placed in front of the fabric is illuminated, and after a few minutes a negative image or "shadow" of the object appears on the light-sensitive surface. Areas that were not exposed to light remain white, while illuminated areas take on a blue color of varying degrees of saturation, depending on the degree of transparency of the object.
It should be noted that Zhang Dali's love for ancient photography technologies and retro cameras is shared by many modern photographers and artists. For example, Dali's compatriot Hu Shaoming dedicated the Reconnecting Time project to vintage cameras.
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