Solo Exhibition Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou
The Map of the Mapping
Artist: ZHANG Wenxin
Duration: 2019.05.07-2019.05.24
Location: Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
The Map of the Mapping is a long-term project of Zhang Wenxin on how to re-understand photography. The work began with the artist’s structural reconstruction using a low-pixel digital photo of a deceased family member. Once the audience enter the exhibition space, it is like they come to the front of a magic mirror in which the shapes and shadows reflect on each other. Then wandering through the maze mapped out by the artist, the audience will see a matrix composed of 13 photos, resembling some kind of shrine or altar image, connecting the artist’s creation trajectories in a radial order, and any threads reaching out from the center can grow into a deep path. Whether it is a “shadow maze”, a photo matrix, or a tower-shaped installation, the images are all linked by mapping logic, and the mandala schema also becomes a clue to connect their revelations.
As its name implies, The Map of the Mapping is not a solidified landscape, but an active “mapping” reactor. In it, myriads of symbols related to photography are aroused, activated and recognized. Through the mapping between different media, different situations and different color spaces, between inheritance and disappearance, truth accidentally reveals itself after the illusion is continuously stripped off.
Since the iconoclasm, human beings have rarely mentioned the mysterious enchantment of images that originated in the religious art period. Especially in today’s world now shrouded by scientism, this enchantment has almost become a shielded area that people avoid talking about. But the magic of photography seems to never fade away. When technical images (like photography) are reexamined by us, perhaps it is the artists who are reminding us how to coexist with science and mystery at the same time. What is mapped by the mapping place is how to retain a touch of innocence, enthusiasm and sincerity of the enchanted era in a world of disenchantment of the contemporary society, so as not to make the self gradually lose perception under the cold reality.
Written by Wang Huan
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