Shao Wenhuan’s photography moderates between the ancient technique of hand-crafted silver-painting on canvas and the contemporary technique of digital imaging, thus causing an overlapping of ‘objective’ documentary with subjective painting. Originally, however, he specialised in painting. The experience of such thorough investigation into a range of media has instilled within him the greatest possible respect for the differences between the properties of certain media, and a disregard for the constraints of established forms; hence utilising and combining different approaches in his work. He has chosen photography as his main method due to the objective quality of photography. Yet, his dissatisfaction with the physicality emerging through the lens, has lead him to apply painting, scraping and etching methods to the base of the photograph, borrowing the riches of these various visual languages and conveying his understanding of both history and the present moment through their subtle connotations. Within Shao Wenhuan’s work, the strength of the indefinable intuitiveness leads directly to the places deep within us which language and text cannot touch.


Critic
Du Xiyun