798 Space (Ceramic 3 St. 798 Road, 798 Art District, 4. Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China). May 11 – May 26, 2013
Although there is no Photospring in Beijing this year, Thinking Hands (the production office led by artist and 798 art district driver Huang Rui) has nonetheless teamed up with Les Rencontres d’Arles for this exhibition. This is the third consecutive appearance of the Arles Photography Festival in the Chinese capital, and features five names from the École Nationale Superieur de la Photographie in Arles. They are: Vincent Fournier, Dorothée Smith, Olivier Metzger, Grégoire Alexandre and Aurore Valade. The photographs on show, all printed in fairly large format, range from portraits to fashion-ready set-ups with ties held by strings and backing paper enlivened as origami. Perusing them in 798 Space’s capacious interior, where Maoist slogans are still visible on the Bauhaus concrete eaves above, is a quiet and engaging experience. One might particularly remember the fictive/documentary images of astronauts’ gloves and practice equipment by Vincent Fournier, which are accompanied enigmatically by a reddish desert (or is it planetary?) landscape. Dorothée Smith’s strong portraits of transgender youths also stand out.
Vincent Fournier, “General Boris V. Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center [GCTC], Star City, Zvyozdny Gorodok, Russia”, Space Project, 153cm x 200 cm, 2007
樊尚•福尼埃，“鲍里斯•微，尤里•加加林宇航员训练中心[GCTC]，星城，俄罗斯“，航天工程，153cm x 200 cm, 2007
Vincent Fournier, “Kjell Henriksen Observatory #1 [KHO], Adventdalen, Spitsbergen Island, Norway,” Space Project, 153 cm x 200 cm, 2010.
樊尚•福尼埃,”谢尔•亨里克森天文台＃1[KHO]阿德文特达伦,挪威斯匹次卑尔根岛”, 航天工程, 153 cm x 200 cm, 2010
