Chen Wei will be participating in a group exhibition entitled 'Performance and Imagination: Chinese Photography 1911-2014' at Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway. 

Works by Chinese photo artists from every decade of the 20th century are juxtaposed with works from the last five years by ten contemporary photo artists. This extensive exhibition makes its European debut in Stavanger abd offers a glimpse into a rich photographic tradition.

The exhibition covers a vast time span and focuses on an area which has not yet been researched to any great extent. Rather than providing a comprehensive presentation of Chinese photographic history, the exhibition will aim to boost interest for this rich and interesting material. The exhibition will display works that are largely unknown to a Norwegian (and a European) audience, making the project more tantalizing, but at the same time also more challenging in terms of how to introduce the works to the audience. The exhibition will therefore be accompanied by an extensive catalogue.

The aesthetic choices in the historical materials has been based on the preference for works that can easily be viewed in connection with different contemporary artistic expressions.

The conceptual framework is implied in the title of the exhibition: ”Performance and Imagination”. The selection of photographs in the exhibition can all be viewed in the framework set by these two words. Some photographs focus on the great importance performance plays in official and private settings, while other photographs appeal to imaginations as expressions of philosophical, political or private yearnings.

*image(left)
courtesy of the artist and Leo Xu Projects