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Feng Yan @ timezone8

by Feng Yan

Most of the works showing here are from my 2005 “Order” series; two of them are from the “Portraits” series and the other four are from my latest series “Psychedelic Bamboo”. My choices are not based solely on their sizes which are in fact more suitable for the exhibition space of a bookstore, but would also like to build a dialogue between the old and the new. Many people say that my photographic works are like paintings; I think it is due to their painterly compositions.

I increasingly enjoy expressing my unchanged predilection for “design” through the process of photography. From when I was 21, Dang Cheng, my teacher from Xian who had studied design in Japan, imbued me with the fundamental concepts of design. I came to recognize the power that could be created through rational arrangement, and I believe it is essential in any design approach. In the “Order” series, I displayed the divine, impeccable order existing in quotidian things. In 2007’s “Power” series, I was concerned with the symbolic details of things, then came the minimalist and abstract work “Four Flags”.

“Psychedelic Bamboo” are entirely abstract. Most people would mistake the formless, beautiful colors were computer generated. The fact is, they are not, and it does not matter.

My works have always been born from the experience of my everyday life. Certain things in daily life have repeatedly appeared, confirmed, stagnated, vanished, resumed then reaffirmed in my mind; then they became the gene of my work morphing eventually into a kind of classic scene almost like a moment in eternity.

Trailing down the road, I would like to take these scenes with me until their secular identities
are lost in front of my eyes.

September , 2009
( Translated by Elaine Woo)