ShanghART's library｜Jiang Pengyi's new book "Caowei"
2024-10-24 10:56

ShanghART Gallery is delighted to announce that Jiang Pengyi's new book "Caowei" will be launching soon. "Caowei" is a book that was planned and visually designed in collaboration with the artist's creation. Jiang Pengyi, engaged in contemporary art creation, turned his lens to his hometown of "Caowei," where he had been away from for many years, and compiled the photos he took of his hometown twenty years ago and those taken upon his return as original materials.

The final book consists of three volumes: the "Root" volume, which is alogically arranged collection of black and white photographs, the "Stem" volume, which is a travelogue-style collection of Polaroid color photographs, and the "Ear" volume, which is a semi-fictional novel. Together, the three volumes describe the artist's memories and emotions towards his hometown of Caowei.

The three volumes of black and white photographs, Polaroid images, and the novel respectively correspond to the author's triple relationship with the time and space of his hometown: local history, personal cinematic history, and family changes.

The "Ear" volume of "Caowei" is Jiang Pengyi's first novel.

The story is set in Caowei Town by Dongting Lake, focusing on a middle-aged man nicknamed "Big Head". Memory flashbacks of returning to the place where he grew up after dozens of years away from home. As he wanders through the streets that are both feeling familiar and odd, long-buried pasts rise and fall like the tides of the Caowei River. The town’s transformation, family memories, and hidden secrets are revealed chapter by chapter. The novel unfolds in eight chapters with a leisurely narrative pace and a seamless narrative structure, offering a lyrical elegy about memory, loss, and the passage of time.

Jiang Pengyi’s writing, through its cautious use of local colloquial narration, creates a vivid and accessible portrayal of the Xiaoxiang town. Simultaneously, the Caowei River, described from multiple perspectives, becomes a lasting metaphor for the continuous flow of time. The novel “Caowei” is at times nostalgic, at times melancholic, and at times profoundly serene. It intricately weaves together layers of life’s fragility and deep emotion, unfolding a rich tapestry of human experience.

The novel volume using a standard 32 open variant, giving it a slim and tall feeling similar to the format of paperback books in the early 1920s, using a classical nine-grid layout to convey the slender image of "reeds." Additionally, it uses grass pulp paper as the printing material to echo the content.

Based on the research of the agricultural system along the upper and lower reaches of the Dongting Lake area, the wide-grown Poaceae reed in the upper and lower reaches of the Caowei River served as the starting point for the design concept, inspiring the design structure, editing relationships, and materials.

The visual volume of Caowei adopts a large 20 open format, with the black and white volume using perfect binding, the Polaroid volume using PUR ultra-thin perfect binding.

The author invited the artist Yin Kanbao to illustrate the town of Caowei.

-----

Related Artists: JIANG PENGYI 蒋鹏奕

Related Exhibitions: