The photographs of Xu Yong compel viewers to stop and have a second look, not quite sure how to respond to the fuzziness on them whether it is from their eyes or from the imageries.

In his series of works, what Xu wants is more than causing visual anxiety. He aims at challenging the very core of the methodology of photography. By deliberately disturbing the recording of objects that are in focus through a barrier on the camera, he forces viewers to fathom and switch from the traditional concept of picture-taking to image-taking made possible by photography, from the concept of “what to see” in photography to “how to see” the images.

By way of his confrontations with the tradition of photography, Xu produces a series of abstract imageries made up of blocks of vivid colours or patches of grey gradations similar to Chinese shun-mo paintings. What that appears familiar turns out to be awkwardly strange and what that looks curiously bizarre is in fact on subject that is ordinary.

Xu Yong is no stranger to the Beijing art scene.  He made his name twenty years ago photographing the Hutongs (old residential alleys or cul-de-sacs) of old Beijing. He was the founder of the  Hutong-go-around Tour and the key figure and promoter behind the now world-renown Beijing 798 Art Zone.

“By increasing the barrier between the lens and the body of the camera, fuzzy colours of  block-like images turn photography from the concept of “capturing pictures of the world” into “capturing images made possible by photography”, that is from the concept of “what to see” into “how to see”. Through this switch, photographic autonomy is elevated to an extreme where photography becomes the language of attributes of the lenses. Such approach obviously belongs to the tradition of modernistic art in pursuit of methodology. These images of Xu Yong are deliberately made to obstruct our view of the actual objects and to impose visual anxiety. Photography, then, becomes a method of “purely seeing”.

Shu Yang on Photographic Production
Beijing, April 12, 2010

Artist will be present in the Opening Reception
October 6th, 2010 (Wednesday), 6pm - 8pm