Group Exhibition Art Fairs 798-751 Park Seven Nine Tank, Beijing
Booth G22
Geng Jianyi and His Play of Shadow
Jiang Jiayi (1962–2017) was an artist of profound influence in contemporary Chinese art, with a diverse practice spanning painting, video, installation, photography, and conceptual art. In 2022, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai held a large-scale retrospective titled ‘Who is He?’ to commemorate his artistic achievements and review his career. In 2023, the exhibition traveled to UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. To this day, his works are regarded as important examples of conceptual art in China.
In the 1990s, photo studios in China still largely still relied on traditional film-based photography, images were developed in darkrooms using chemical processes. Against this backdrop, Geng began exploring non-traditional methods of photographic development. His ‘Visible Daily Image’ series, was one of his key experimental works created in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
The treated the darkroom as a studio and photographic paper as his canvas. Working in complete darkness, he used transparent developing liquid to paint invisible images. This method, akin to Automatism, imbued the image-making process with a sense of randomness and chance. Yet, each gesture and stroke revealed his bodily perception, visualizing the subconscious in a tangible form.
ShanghART Gallery will present Geng Jianyi’s work ‘Visible Daily Image 2’ at ART021 Beijing. In this piece, the artist applied segmented exposures and developer washes to long rolls of photographic paper. Varying development times result in differences in tone and layers across the painting, reinforcing the close connection between image and time, the concept of Duration. This experimental phase of Geng’s had an influence on contemporary Chinese photography and painting, providing subsequent artists with inspiration in both form and process.
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