Augenblick, Exhibition : Un'Impero in Posa

I was invited to an interesting exhibition here in Shanghai, "Un'Impero in Posa" is a showcase of photos done by italian Missionaries who travelled in China between the 19th and the 20th century. The Exhibition is organized by Univercity of Bologna together with the Italian Ministry of Cultural affair and the Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai. Starting from the 14th at Tongji University in Shanghai (Zonghe Building).

Augenblick, Exhibition : The Cuban Revolution at ICP

If you like how does it look a revolution and in particular the Cuban Revolution you should not miss (while in New York) the new exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) , a collection of some unknown photos which depict the Cuban uprising and the revolution which took Che Guevara to become an icon.
Here a note from the Exhibition curated by Brian Wallis and independent curator Mark Sanders.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was one of the most spectacular political events of the twentieth century. A dramatic chapter in the Cold War, the improbable overthrow of the dictator Fulgenico Batista by a ragtag band of young Communist guerillas and intellectuals occurred just ninety miles from the United States. Tracing the movement from the triumphal entry of the rebels into Havana on January 1, 1959, to the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, this exhibition shows the tremendous influence of photography in recording and encouraging the revolutionary movement in Cuba. Among the most outstanding works in this exhibition of rare vintage prints are Alberto Korda's famous portrait of Che Guevara titled "Heroic Guerrilla" and never-before-seen images of Che's death in Bolivia in 1967. The show features work from over thirty photographers, including important images of pre-Revolutionary Cuba in the 1950s by Constantino Arias as well as classic images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raúl Corrales, and Burt Glinn, among others. Cuba in Revolution explores everyday life in Cuba before and after the Revolution and considers the ways in which both Cuban and foreign photojournalists helped construct the image of the revolution abroad.

Augenblick, Exhibition : Cosplay in China

Curator and Professor Gu Zheng has invited me to exhibit my portrait series on Chinese Cosplay together with Zhen Han and Chang Hong which they worked on  an interesting project Called Soul Stealer that focus on the idea of adopting a costume in China and make a distinction between Old traditional Opera house and modern Cosplayer. I am very happy to be part of the exhibition which take place at Epsite Gallery in Moganshan rd in Shanghai. Opening this coming friday from 4pm on and exhibition will last until the 17th of October.

Augenblick , exhibition : George Georgiou

I am also happy to introduce George Georgiou which accept to present his work "Fault Lines : Turkey/East/West  along with the work of Vanessa Winship to exhibit at the CIAC museum in Foligno as part of the program of Canti&Discanti festival . The two exhibition will be opened on Thursday the 8th of July at 9PM. Here an introduction of the project :
Turkey is a strategically important nation, poised geographically and symbolically between Europe and Asia and is seen as the country that will bridge the gap between East and West.
But Turkey itself is at a crossroads, a crossroads that will define it’s very future. British photographer George Georgiou  spent 5 years living in Turkey. Travelling across the country, Georgiou’s photographs explore and question the concept of  East/West, the meaning and consequences of modernity and the many complex and contradictory fault lines at play in contemporary Turkey.

Augenblick , exhibition : Vanessa WInship

I am happy to present Vanessa Winship exhibition "Sweet Nothing" as part of the program of Canti&Discanti world festival in Foligno . I was asked by the organization of the festival to curate photo exhibition with the topic of Turkey and therefore I was pleased that Vanessa accepted to be exhibited. The exhibition will start with an opening at the CIAC Museum in Foligno on thursday 8th of July at 9.30PM 

here some note from the series "Sweet Nothing" :

Until very recently many girls in these remote parts never stepped over the doorstep of a school playground. Attitudes about sending girls to schools is a complex mix of reasons, with traditional values being part of that compexity.

Increasingly conscious of this situation, the Turkish government and several other organisations launched a series of campaigns to get more girls into schools.Slowly the numbers of girls enrolling into the schools rose. 

I wanted to make a series of portraits these girls on the borderlands. Knowing their status I wanted to give a small space for the girls to have a small moment of importance in front of a camera. 

I decided to use this slower, formal way of making the pictures to create this space. Every frame was made at the same distance to ensure a kind of equality to each girl.I hoped symbol of the uniform, the distance in repetition, and the austerity of the landscape would represent one thing, but I also hoped more than anything, in the expressions of the girls faces, to draw attention to the idea of these young girls poised at the moment “just before”. The moment where possibility lies, a time where the presentation of self  teeters into consciousness. I asked the group of girls to come forward with their chosen friends or with their sisters. Occasionally they come forward alone. Sometimes I asked to make another frame of an individual girl. The girls were a mix of emotions about this event, this small moment of theatre in front of them. They were excited and curious all at the same time. Many things touched me during the making of these images. I was touched by the gravity in their demeanour at the moment in front of the camera, their fragility, their simplicity, their grace, their closeness to one another, but most of all I was struck by their complete lack of posturing and their complete innocence.

Augenblick , Exhibition : True Fables Philipp Engelhorn

True Fables is the name of the exhibition of photos from German Photographer Philipp Engelhorn which will open today at No Borders Gallery in Hong Kong. The event is organized by the Fundraiser Show for Vision First Charity . The exhibition will display photos from different remote countries.

Augenblick, Exhibition : Xu Peiwu in Dragons horses spirits and Gods

Beaugeste Gallery, perhaps one of the best in Shanghai Scene will introduce a new exhibition of Xu Peiwu’s photo “DRAGONS HORSES SPIRITS and GODS". Here the words of presentation from curator Jean Loh :
“Dragons, Horses, Spirits & Gods, an Alpa diary” is an original photographic essay, in which critically acclaimed urban landscape photographer Xu Peiwu, sought out the invisible and the intangible spirits that have disappeared from our naked eye, amidst the accelerated urbanization of our living environment. Baudelaire’s “Painter of Modern Life” would have agreed with this pursuit of a philosophical imagination that makes the beauty of a modern black & white landscape even more striking and meaningful. 著名城市景观摄影师许培武的“龍，馬，精， 神----阿尔帕日记”是一本超凡的攝影散文，探索今日我们生活环境加快城市化进程中，从我们的肉眼裏消失了的无形精神。 像波德萊爾的“現代生活畫家”， 許培武所追求的哲學想象力， 使一組現代化的黑白風景攝影， 顯示的更引人注目和更有意義。
Opening on the 22nd of May.

Augenblick, Exhibition : Juliana Beasley at Image Singulieres

Juliana Beasley will present her new work at Image Singulieres in Séte, France. I am a big fan of Juliana's work and I will prepare an interview with her as soon we will both have time to talk more about her work and and her life which are often linked together. The project is a result of a residency where she has produced great images which ended up in a book called "Juliana Beasley, Séte #10"
The festival will introduce also many other photographers such as Jacob Holdt, Lars Tunbjörk, Chris Anderson and some others.
Here an introduction from the project written by Christian Caujolle :
Juliana Beasley, heir to a tradition of American photography (Arbus or Goldin), is interested in life on the margins. She is currently working in the deprived neighbourhood of Rockaway in New York, documenting a small community of destitute and forgotten whites. Before that, we learned of her through her 2003 book Lap Dance, a real journey into the world of striptease. But here in Sète, Juliana trains her lens on a city and its culture. More than that, she discovers the south itself! It was a journey of adventure for her, not without its challenges, given the divide between old Europe and America today. Her residency resulted in a book, the third in an exciting collection also featuring those by Anders Petersen and Bertrand Meunier. A different kind of book, revealing a different kind of Sète, full of baroque interiors and unusual stories.
13 MAY till 09 JULY Paul-Valéry Museum «Beyond The Walls» salle Tarbouriech

Augenblick , Profile : Dubravka Vidovic at European Photography Festival

Croatian Dubravka Vidović is an artist ranging from Installation to Photography. She is currently exhibiting at the "Incanto" at the European Photography 2010 in Reggio Emilia (Italy) curated by Elio Grazioli and Gigliola Foschi, presenting her series of photos realized during a travel in India, in Rajasthan, that compose an imaginary landscape where the main element is water and coloured plastic buckets in a hostile sorroundings. She have worked on the images before taking the shots, arranging installations that transfigure the world in a poetic, playful deliberately utopian way. Landscape is not only a objective phenomenon, but a new and personal place.
"She set out the containers directly into the Rajastan landscape, she chose some places, and then arranged plastic buckets to create a figurative composition, and at the same time they become elements of her story about the water. They appear like silent colorfull points among a field surrounded by ruins; they hang like unlikely fruits from a feathery tree in the desert; they invade a half-destroyed shelter, surrounded by the Pespi logo; they take the place of the elements of an old watermill. They seem to wait the rain, or to be brought to a spring to “water”. There is a dry poetry in these pictures that are telling about the essence of life, about its fragility and its hardness. In the care for humility of the things, even the poorest as the more anonimous, Dubravka catches the birth of the shape with a steady hand, to photography and drawn it. Through the living landscapes of the boxed sea and these installations in the nature, the connection with art appears: to represent the real and its invisible relations with the perception, to identify a shape to grasp the experience of the world and its perpetual transformation."
Curator Francesca Pasini for solo show "Boxed Sea" at Gallery Artopia in MilanHere the statement presentation of the exhibition written from curator Gigliola Foschi:
"The images do not deny reality, nor do they remove the pain of it, but they are able to capture things differently in that they are sustained by the need to be fuelled by imagination, hope and engaged attention. In the works of the authors displayed at this exhibit there are no flights towards gratuitous worlds of the imagination. Reality is there, before their eyes, but it is given renewed vibrancy by the affective or imaginary dimension of their way of looking at it. Through extremely diversified visual or design strategies, with the power to effect a kind of sideways shift or displacement of what we normally see, the works become spaces of discovery and enchantment in which reality no longer appears in its “opaqueness”, but opens up to a hidden and evocative dimension instead. Some of the authors have worked on the images before taking the shots, arranging performances or installations that transfigure the world in a poetic, playful or deliberately utopian way. Others use a close up shot or a view dilated in time to transform fragments of reality (a donkey's face, a ship model in a bottle, a simple room, a landscape, an old photograph) into mysterious apparitions or presences suspended in time, stirring the viewer's imagination."

Augenblick, Exhibition : Square of Rome at Moca Shanghai

Achille Bonito Oliva together with Cecilia Casorati curated a exhibition called Squares of Rome where different italian photographer were assigned to shoot in different location of the eternal City. Good result and especially interesting to look at Gabriele Basilico or Olivero Barbero among the other here at Moca in Shanghai. Here a note from the curators:
Over the course of time the square has had various functions and signs, yet, it has always maintained as a constant its attitude of welcoming together and generating connections and correspondence of people. In Italy, the square had its beginnings at the start of the Middle Ages as the courtyard to the Cathedral or as the open space placed before the civil authorities and it thus became the barycentre of the development of the cities. It is with Michelangelo, but especially with Bernini, that the square assumes the modern characteristics as a place of relation between the urban structure and the architectural solution. The Baroque square, through the continuous exchange between external and internal, plays upon artifice: it is the stage for the representation of reality, work of art one may move through, symbol of opening towards the world. The fountains, the statues the monuments - located within the square - activate continual and suprising references to one another and they set the seal upon this new vision. Squares of Rome, by means of the placement of twenty large-format works of photographic art - that present a modern image of the most eloquent squares of Rome - and with the same number of sculptures, re-proposes the idea of the square as the space of dialogue and dynamic fulcrum of relations.

Augenblick , Exhibition : Yongkang Lu Art

I will exhibit 3 prints from my series on Chinese Cosplayer at the new renovated area of Yonkang road in a group exhibition . The opening will include three spaces in the same road
and all the exhibitions are curated by Zane Mellupe which is also presenting some artwork.
here the introduction of the exhibitions with the list of people who will present their work:

Asphalt Concrete at Yonkang Lu Openings (three galleries show in one road)
At Yongkang lu Art 83
Who pays the hidden costs of growth?
This exhibition explores in detail the pressures put on individuals, families and communities through different artistic mediums, and from local and foreign artist’s perspectives. From recent scandals to ever present problems, the artist unique approach tells us for once in a while to take a deep breath and consider where we currently stand.
The exhibition presents:
Lei Hua (CN), Sha Qin (CN) , Virginie Lerouge Knight (FR) ,Wang Lin (CN) , Daniele Mattioli (IT)
Zane Mellupe (LV) , Kaspars Podnieks (LV) , Krišs Salmanis (LV) , Rose Tang (CN)
curated by Zane Mellupe

C Individuals by Christophe Demaitre and Christin Kalweit
At Yongkang Lu Art 72 YK art space
C individuals - sea individuals - see individuals - is an exhibition of the artworks of Christophe Demaitre (Be) and Christin Kalweit (De). The exhibition reveals two different approaches of the perception of interaction between an individual and a crowd. Christophe has focused his work on portraying the crowd as a singular individual mass. The principal of his vision is to suggest that all individual elements assume equal importance. There is no central control and no autonomy within his composition. Christin’s work is highlighting the different individual emotional relationships that occur within a confluence. She draws particular attention to the unique elements of the singular individual, whether it is their emotions, mood, behavior or creations. She reveals the interaction between the singular entities in order to show the greater unity.curated by Zhu Ye and Zane Mellupe

aQuarium by Liu Dao
At Yongkang Lu Art 47

island6 shack
“Shush” she said and met herself for the 1389th time.

Augenblick , Exhibition : Rafal Milach - Black Sea of Concrete

Black Sea of Concrete if one of the latest project by Rafal Milach, the project which has won the Photography Book Now will be exhibited as solo Exhibition at Yours Gallery in Warsaw (Poland). I already spoke of Rafal on his "7 rooms" Russian Project when it was exhibited at the Pingyao Festival in 2009 and I will speak more later on (I am preparing an interview with Rafal) . The opening will be on the 18th of March , if you pass by dont miss it.