Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7

2008 - Photography (Photography)

Jiang Pengyi

location: Beijing, China
year born: 1977
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Yuanjiang, Hunan Province, China

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water. Yet, ambiguous lights blink from buildings and yachts still sail on the water, and further observation reveals these structures to be miniatures manipulated by the artist through Photoshop and other postproduction image tools. The model city’s surroundings are themselves real abandoned spaces, perhaps an empty room, a wait-to-be demolished building, or a discarded bathtub. In this way, Unregistered City is a double play on a dystopia vision of urbanization: It is an imagined city built upon the actual ruins of cities and human life. Through a dark and entropic undertone and estranged urban arrangements, the artist does not just critique, but poses fundamental questions.


Jiang Pengyi is a photographer who observes cities through the lens of his camera. His photographs have a dispassionate attitude towards the unprecedentedly fast urbanization of China. Through long-term exposure—sometimes over fifty minutes—and image manipulation, Jiang creates surreal and apocalyptic scenarios that suggest a disastrous future. For Jiang, skyscrapers are spectacles that evidence the mythologization of modern urban life. And by virtue of his technical strategies, the illuminated skyscrapers in Illuminant—a hotel, a government building, a news agency—appear bizarrely alive as if creatures from outer space. Though highly aesthetic and polished, Jiang’s images trigger an unidentified sense of fear and discomfort.


Colors:



Other related works, blended automatically

Golden Bridge
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...

Safely Maneuvering Across Lin He Road
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

1995

For his action, Safely Maneuvering across Lin He Road , Lin built a brick wall on one side of a busy main street in the city of Guangzhou...

Beyond Geography
© » KADIST

Li Ran

2012

In his video work Beyond Geography , Li dramatizes the role of the artist-as-imitator to the point of sheer parody...

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...

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...

Dilemma, three way of fork in the road
© » KADIST

Jianwei Wang

2007

In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...

I Want to be Gentleman
© » KADIST

Lu Chunsheng

2000

Lu has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations...

Pleasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh - 3
© » KADIST

Yang Zhenzhong

2012

Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...

21 Ke (21 Grams)
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2010

Sun’s animated film 21 Ke (21 Grams) is based on the 1907 research by the American physician Dr...

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

La Town
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2014

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

Nightmare-Wallpaper (No.DCCC901-16#8): An-Angel-in-Conversation-with-a-Young-Lady
© » KADIST

Pak Sheung Chuen

2017

The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...

New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP)
© » KADIST

Pak Sheung Chuen

2008

Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...

Drag
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope...

Bus Logos
© » KADIST

Yto Barrada

2004

In this photographic series, Yto Barrada was interested in the logos of the buses that travel between North Africa and Europe...

No Title (Eh What Do?)
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...

Ink Diary
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2006

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

A Gust of Wind
© » KADIST

Zhang Peili

2008

In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique...

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...