In Feng Yan’s photography series, The Power, we can see traces of the influence of Foucault’s ideas regarding power. Of course, Feng Yan has already expertly concealed his understanding of Foucault’s ideas on power within these visual investigations and critiques of the world of power.
He has used compact and powerful image structures to reveal the deeply embedded secrets of the contemporary Chinese reality with its rigid social stratification and power structures. His grasp of the chaotic reality in China is presented anew from his unique discovery and extraction of details, which are then elevated to the heights of philosophy and examination. Sometimes, these works, in a kind of Chinese-style meditative lightness of form, present a sort of “tension of the everyday”(in the words of He Yanhui) while revealing his serious focus on reality. His ability to extract and refine formal elements from reality that fit with his themes is an embodiment of his photographic cultivation and skill, and a testament to his ability to find a basic visual vocabulary for presenting his thoughts.
In the Power, Feng Yan uses tension-filled extractions and magnifications of details to present the omnipresence of power. The shining wheel of a luxury sedan, the sharp points of red flags lined up at a conference site, all of these details that embody the presence of power have been magnified to abnormal sizes, casting the dark, powerful presence of power in stark relief and putting the special existence form of this special presence on display. He indirectly yet clearly presents the presence of power and its means of presentation. For this reason, his photography becomes a display of displays, a presentation of presentation.
While pursuing compactness in form, colors are also an important method of the artist’s in conveying power. Red, that color which in Chinese history and reality has taken on a dual symbolic meaning, appears to be the basic tone with which the artist expresses the special status and presence of power. Through constructions of color and detail, he concretizes and visualizes power while also enriching its visual definition.
Feng Yan’s photographic works have always maintained a calm style, observing the world with cool yet incisive vision. There is only one insistent theme in this series of photographs- the spectacle of power as it lurks in our daily lives. What he has observed and wants to share with people is the essence of the things that he has seen with rational, thinking eyes. Through his photographic observations and a series of rearrangements between them, everyday things that once seemed wholly unrelated suddenly expose enlightening connections and come together to form a comprehensive visual explanation. Through these countless fragments of reality, he has compiled a realistic landscape of the presence of power. |
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