The title of the show, I am your agency, speaks to the absence of personal self-expression; examples of the individual in the environment beyond the collective work-group or factory photograph, and as well, I believe, the difficulties for a generation of Chinese to claim place, and realize and discover themselves in the photographic document separate from state photography. The title challenges us to consider who possess the agency to act, both then and now, leaving it as an open question for the viewer to consider.

In Huang's paintings, our tendency to discard images becomes entangle in our continuing regard for craft and the artist's hand, slowing us down to reflect on what can be found imbedded in both the spontaneous and carefully planned. Through a process of amplification Huang seeks to revers, if only momentarily within the confines of the installation, the assumed primacy of the photograph in processing an intrinsic reality. The exhibition asserts the power of paintings to reveal the processes of codification in photography, and draws out a vital reading on contemporary China.
- Gordon Laurin

*image (left)
© Jing Yuan Huang
courtesy of the artist and Force Gallery