About Us. Young Photography from China

Artists: Adou, Birdhead, Cai Dongdong, Chen Ronghui, Chen Wei, Gao Mingxi, Jiang Pengyi, Liang Xiu, Ren Hang, RongRong

In its last exhibition, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung had already turned its attention to China with Robert Rauschenberg’s great series “Study for Chinese Summerhall.” With the new exhibition About Us. Young Photography from China the foundation now offers inside views of the artists living in the country. It therewith gives insights into a part of the world that is increasingly a decisive political and economic power internationally, though its visual worlds are little known in the medium of photography in the Western world.

The exhibition features a total of seventy photographs by 14 young Chinese artists. The selection includes internationally known positions such as Chen Wei, Ren Hang and Yang Fudong, but also artists largely unknown outside of China such as Adou and Wang Ningde. All works have been acquired by Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek for the foundation on her numerous trips to China. They offer insight into the individual complex emotional and experiential worlds of a generation of young artists who use photograph as their medium in diverse ways in their search for identity in the turbulences of a changing society.

Whether in quiet, black-and-white aesthetic suggestive of documentaries or as a dramatic presentation in color, they all tell of the artists’ own experiences: About Us. Their themes revolve around self-perception, subjective experiences, and everyday ways of living. They range from documentation of the explosive social change by way of critical perception of the new living conditions in the metropolises and in the countryside to attentiveness to its vanishing cultural heritage.

At the same time, the selection of works reflects the broad artistic diversity in the country. It goes back to a new generation of artists that completely transformed their artistic production in the 1980s and 1990s after the Cultural Revolution in China ended. After Socialist Realism, ideology and propaganda, they developed new concepts and visual languages and a wealth of styles and techniques. The exhibition About Us. Young Photography from China provides a glimpse of the different forms of expression and is intended as a contribution to the discourse on contemporary photography in China.

The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung supports art and science. It was established in 2000 by the entrepreneur Alexander Tutsek and the scientist Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek as a non-profit foundation. The foundation is deliberately committed to the special, the neglected and the overlooked. In the field of contemporary art, the foundation focuses on collecting and exhibiting international photography as well as sculptures and installations that use glass as a medium.