Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
2008 - Photography (Photography)
Jiang Pengyi
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
© » 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...
© » KADIST
Jianwei Wang
2007In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
© » KADIST
Yang Zhenzhong
2012Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...
© » KADIST
Gabriel Orozco
2002Gabriel Orozco comments: “In the exhibition [Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002], I tried to connect with the photographs I took in Mali in July...
© » KADIST
Qiu Anxiong
2011A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
© » KADIST
Raymond Pettibon
2006The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
© » KADIST
Carlos Garaicoa
2010From the series the Old and the New (XI) by Carlos Garaicoa belongs to the series Lo viejo y lo nuevo / Das Alte und das Neue (The Old and the New) which was first exhibited in 2010 at Barbara Gross Gallery in Germany...
© » KADIST
Raymond Pettibon
The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...
© » KADIST
Jonathan Hernández
2008In line with Hernández’s interest in catastrophe, Vulnerabilia (choques) is a collection of images of shipwrecks and Vulnerabilia (naufragios) collects scenes of car crashes...
© » KADIST
Xiaoyun Chen
2006The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
© » KADIST
Chen Shaoxiong
2006After 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...
© » KADIST
Zhang Peili
2008In 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...
© » KADIST
Gabriel Orozco
1992Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...
© » KADIST
Yang Xinguang
2009Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...