The Tower of Babel: Destruction

2010 - Photography (Photography)

Du Zhenjun

location: Paris, France
location: Shanghai, China
year born: 1961
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Shanghai, China

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale. These photographs present a series of urban landscapes and assembled Foucauldian structures of the present. Du sees the Tower of Babel as a continually reinvented narrative that warns people of “dangerous tendencies in the present time.” Du’s Babylonian towers resurrect from fallen rubbles of religious history in grand scale to focus on modern crises of civilization. Though the theme began with the struggle of monotheism over linguistic and geographic diversity in early human history, Babel in Du’s work has become a contemporary vision of catastrophic threat to the future of humanity.


Born in 1961, Du was trained as a painter and sculptor at the Institutes of Arts and Trades in Shanghai and the Fine Arts College at the University of Shanghai and garnered M.A. from the Regional School of Fine Arts of Rennes, France in 1999. Despite his classical training, Du became one of the first generation of artists to incorporate digital technologies into art pieces, producing interactive installations and describing digital media to be “a way of working on the dimension of power inherent to a society of information and new technologies.” Du’s works explore themes of “Modern Man” and human tragedy. Specifically, he highlights the ecstasy of human behavior in light of suffering and challenges in conveying what he calls the “universal human condition.”


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » China, » Color Photography, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Contemporary Participation, » Cultural Commentary, » Chinese  
» see more

603 Football Field
© » KADIST

Qing Zhang

2006

603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...

5
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2012

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration...

Tremble
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2009

In the video installation Tremble, Jiang projected the life-size images of seven naked men and women onto seven individual screens...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

The Tower of Babel: The Carnaval
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

603 Football Field
© » KADIST

Qing Zhang

2006

603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...

5
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2012

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration...

Automóvel
© » KADIST

Cinthia Marcelle

2012

Cinthia Marcelle’s video work Automóvel (2012) re-edits the mundane rhythms of automotive traffic into a highly compelling and seemingly choreographed meditation on sequence, motion, and time...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Three Poems by Katy Lederer
© » BOMB

BOMB Magazine | Three Poems Necessary (Required) Cookies that the site cannot function properly without...

An Evening with Yin-Ju Chen
© » KADIST

Join us to welcome Yin-Ju Chen , Kadist SF artist-in-residence this Spring...

Vertical 14 (Ajarani, RR)
© » KADIST

Claudia Andujar

1984

In 1980, with the construction of highways in Indigenous territories, an epidemic was brought to the Yanomami region...

But Now I Manufacture Hate, Every Single Day
© » KADIST

Huang Xiaopeng

2011

Four knives appearing as if thrown at the wall to alleviate frustration and boredom, form rhythmic shadows and markings of time above a translated phrase boldly printed in simplified Chinese and English...

Related works from the » 2010's created around » Shanghai, China  
» see more

5
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2012

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

Portrait: Cover and Clean
© » KADIST

Qiu Anxiong

2011

A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...

La Town
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2014

Cao Fei’s video La Town, 2014 depicts a mythical metropolis that has been destroyed by unknown forces...

Other works by: » Du Zhenjun  
» see more

The Tower of Babel: The Carnaval
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

The Tower of Babel: Independence of the country
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

A Free Exhibition Featuring Virtual Rainforests Is Coming To Oxo Tower Wharf
© » LONDONIST

Shifting Landscapes At Oxo Tower Wharf | Londonist A Free Exhibition Featuring Virtual Rainforests Is Coming To Oxo Tower Wharf By Hannah Newlon-Trujillo Hannah Newlon-Trujillo A Free Exhibition Featuring Virtual Rainforests Is Coming To Oxo Tower Wharf Sanctuaries of Silence, a virtual reality experience by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee...

98m (the Height of the Campanile, San Marco, Venice, in Super 8mm Film)
© » KADIST

Elizabeth McAlpine

2005

Elizabeth McAlpine’s work frequently deals with time based issues as well as the experience of watching...

Meeting #100
© » KADIST

Jonathan Monk

Meeting #100 is one in a series of text works by Jonathan Monk...

Sojourner
© » KADIST

Cauleen Smith

2018

Set to the iconic and spiritual music of Alice Coltrane’s Turiyasangitananda (1937–2007), Cauleen Smith’s film Sojourner travels across the US to visit a series of sites important to an alternative and creative narrative of black history...