Tseng Kwong Chi

Work from Self Portraits.

“On Dec. 8, 1980, Tseng crashed the opening reception for an exhibition of Ch’ing Dynasty costumes at the Metropolitan Museum. By this time, Tseng had affected a military haircut and added to his costume a small photo identification card. (The words printed on the card, “Visitor” and “Slutforart,” would have blown Tseng’s disguise, but few people ever noticed them.) As the rich and famous arrived, Tseng invited them to pause for photographs and take part in brief conversations which he recorded. Among those snapped posing with Tseng were Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Yves Saint Laurent, who commended Tseng for his fluency in French and asked if he had served in the Chinese embassy in Paris.

That night at the Met, Tseng tapped into something rather profound: the pervasive ignorance of Westerners regarding Asia generally and China specifically. More than just a brilliantly executed hoax, Tseng’s unauthorized appearance at the museum opening was a concise critique of “Orientalism.” It was also a significant moment in the evolution of an artist. From 1979 until his death from AIDS in 1990, Tseng used the persona of an anonymous visiting Chinese government functionary to create an oeuvre that explored and exploited Western stereotypes of Asians. Initially titled “East Meets West,” Tseng’s primary body of work consists of approximately 150 black-and-white photographs, each of which shows the artist, in costume, posing in front of such American tourist meccas as Niagara Falls and Mount Rushmore. After 1983, Tseng went international by photographing himself at sites such as the Eiffel Tower, Tower Bridge in London and the statue of Christ that overlooks Rio de Janeiro.

More concerned with staging a one-man invasion of familiar images than with seeking new perspectives on cliched national icons, Tseng determined the location for his camera by scouting out the most popular tourist views. Wearing his gray Mao suit, ID badge and sunglasses, Tseng posed rigidly with the camera’s shutter release held firmly in one hand, the release cable visibly trailing back to the camera. In the photographs, his expressionless face and clenched fist are vaguely menacing. This menace is subtly reinforced when the camera angle makes Tseng appear to dwarf such monuments of American gigantism as the Empire State Building or the Hollywood sign.

Like the sites where he posed, Tseng became an icon, caricaturing the West’s nightmare of “Yellow Peril,” the dread of being overtaken by anonymous Asian hordes that has been a persistent racist subtext of East-West relations for a century. Coinciding with the beginning of the Reagan era, his early images also seemed to playfully mock the ponderous Cold War, anti-Communist rhetoric then being revived. Throughout the series, Tseng’s alter ego was perfectly realized: impassive and unspecific, he satisfied the basic stereotypes by which Westerners define Asia…” – Grady T. Turner for Art in America

Olof Broström

Work from Wind Drawings.

“Olof Broström possesses a desire to capture and encapsulate time, to be able to freeze parts of an eternal axis of time and make use of the information therein for something else. By documenting natural processes with time-lapse photography, he has tried to show the readability of the movement of clouds, the degradability of spaghetti, or the instant of the appearance of the northern lights of Norrland. He also creates automatic drawing machines, small robots that he employs in order to draw sketches of analog phenomena. The autonomous drawing machines are all built by hand with an assiduousness that testifies to a great familiarity with crafts. Often, Olof Broström uses already existing constructions, for example cleaning robots or radio-controlled toy cars, as the building blocks for a robot. Then he gives them the characteristics they need in order to be able do a sketch, by connecting various pens and nibs to their bodies. They are refined at every round that Olof Broström goes with them, the studio is filled to the brim with small gadgets, motors, nuts, and tools.
The fan is one of the strangest yet one of the most natural inventions in existence. It is nothing other than a wind instrument . In many ways it is emblematic of the inventions that Olof Broström himself builds. It is simple, refined, and reveals something already present, a kind of accentuation, the difference being the sphere in which the byproducts are created: the byproducts of the fan, like much of Broström’s art, are ultimately the same as those that nature creates with the same process. Broström uses, instead, information in order to create art.

The drawings made by the machines are monotonous and impressive. Monochromatic, the various formations occupy their space on the sheet of paper. They show the chaos, the dissolution and transmission – not simply the transmission of graphite and ink to paper, but also that of chance to consistency, or idea to realization. Attentively, the eye follows and sees the impressions of the pen or the pens, measures, calculates, and computes the pressure or the time and speed of the drawing machine.” – Erik Berg

Louis Porter

Work from Cheap Flights.

“To inner-city dwellers there is something unnerving about the seemingly endless sprawl of suburbia. But for most, home is that in-between realm of tree-lined streets and manicured lawns.

Most Western-style societies have their share of suburbia. But Australians, more than most, tend to celebrate it. From Neighbours to the explorations of such artists as John Brack, Howard Arkley, Jenny Watson and Bill Henson, suburbia is a part of the national psyche.

When Louis Porter arrived from England four years ago, he set about working as a documentary photographer but was soon seduced by a more personal fascination. His work covers a bizarre collection of subjects, from brothels to phone boxes, but it is the strange landscape of the ‘burbs by which Porter has been seduced.

His work is currently showing in an exhibition called Suburbia Picnic, with painter David Hurwitz and sculptor David Waters.

Porter quotes on his website, fellow Englishman D.H. Lawrence from his 1923 book Kangaroo, which was written after a visit to Australia: “And there went the long street, like a child’s drawing, the little square bungalows dot-dot-dot, close together yet apart, like modern democracy. The vacancy of this freedom is almost terrifying.”

Porter thrives on this landscape. Power lines in Fawkner sweep majestically across a brilliantly azure sky at the hint of sunset, their shadows crossing the no-man’s land of urban existence. The zebra stripes of the speed bump appear like a crossing to nowhere in Murrumbeena. In Footscray, Porter captures suburbia like an antipodean David Lynch, where carefully tended pink and yellow roses contrast with the sky-blue window frames, but there, almost as if in pride of place, are two discarded tyres on the porch.

In another Footscray image, carefully tended hedges serve to frame a phalanx of tied garbage bags. A roundabout in Preston appears more like a UFO landing, the lack of traffic highlighting its strangely decorative role.

“Much of what makes up our culture is suburban,” says Porter. “We grow up in suburbia, and for many, a huge part of life is about creating our own little slice of suburban bliss.

“Although most of us are a little ashamed to admit it, suburbia is the physical embodiment of a set of values that is almost universal in our society.”

Neighbours aside, much of Australia’s cultural exports have been of the rugged, survival-in-the-desert type, from Mad Max to Crocodile Dundee. Porter admits to being surprised by the reality. “More so than anywhere else I have been, Australia has struck me as a particularly suburban place. This is very much at odds with the popular concept of the rugged Australia I was led to expect when I arrived.

“Australia for me has a great track record of producing some brilliant takes on suburbia. John Brack’s somewhat uneasy depictions of 1950s Melbourne have been of particular interest to me.”

In works such as The Choice is Yours, the cynicism of suburbia filters through. Two identical homes are distinguished by no more than the colour of the flowers planted on either side of a fence. Like Arkley, Porter’s suburbs are vacated of human life, strangely depopulated.

“I find there is something very strange, almost surreal about wandering around suburbia when there is no-one about, especially in the summer when the heat is a little oppressive,” he says. “I time my visits to avoid people and when I do photograph them I try to make them as anonymous as possible, a colour or shape nestled amongst the landscape. I think that when I put people into the photographs they lose a lot of the eerie stillness I enjoy, so I tend to avoid it.”

The results are decidedly surreal. “I think suburbia is a surreal thing and this aspect of it influences me a great deal,” he says.

“I don’t so much construct surreal scenes as wander aimlessly till I discover them. Sometimes I can spend a whole day walking around the ‘burbs and not see a single thing to photograph. Other days I am only limited by the amount of film I have with me.

“My sense of humour is perhaps a little surreal too, I grew up on Monty Python and Spike Milligan so I think that probably has had a big effect.”

In one of Porter’s most powerful images, a night shot taken in inner-city Fitzroy, the backyard light becomes a beacon for a dismissed fridge sitting like some bizarre guardian ready to attack intruders. As with much of Porter’s work, the result seems a balancing act between the mundane and the theatrical.

“It could be a guard dog or possibly it’s been upstaged by a newer model and has been kicked out into the cold to wait for hard rubbish day,” Porter says. “I think it looks a little forlorn. There can be a lot of drama in the mundane aspects of our lives and this is something I am constantly looking for. For some reason I find the idea of the mundane endlessly fascinating, perhaps because if you look close enough there really is no such thing.

“Every suburban garden is unique, for instance – it’s just that as there are so many subtle variations they meld into one in our minds. I try to avoid slipping into seeing just another dustbin or fence and try to see each as a unique thing. This inevitably means I move very slowly and take lots of little breaks.”

Porter is also not without a touch of cynicism about his pet project. He named the images in Suburbia Picnic “by searching through real estate catalogues and cutting out the glib statements concocted by the agents to sell the suburban dream”.” – Ashley Crawford

Mike Reinders

Work from his oeuvre.

“These landscapes are spaces that yearn to be explored. Manifest Destiny is an idea richly embedded within the history of the United States. To mimic the pioneers of past centuries is now a ritual that Americans hold sacred.

The photographs describe two views of a contemporary landscape — one is from a Romantic 19th century tradition where the grandness of the land is cherished; the other confronts modern spaces that at times seem completely incapable of living up to a standard set by Western explorers.

In places that were defined by what was once called wild, the Frontier still holds what we are searching for.” – Mike Reinders

Jonathan Gitelson

Work from The Car Project.

“During the summer of 2004, I moved across the street from the Funky Buddha Lounge, a popular nightclub in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. Each night I would park my car on the street, and each morning I would find that numerous club fliers had been shoved beneath my windshield wipers and into the cracks of my windows. By the time I got to my car each morning, many of the other car owners had already left for the day, discarding their fliers on the ground. This form of advertising intrigued me – an attempt at communication with consumers that was clearly failing, creating huge volumes of what was essentially expensively printed instant garbage.

Shortly after I moved in, I began collecting the fliers from my car and from the sidewalk around my home. By January of 2005, I had collected over 1000 fliers, enough to cover my entire car. I spent three months hand-sewing the fliers together to create a car cover and have photographed the car, with car cover, parked in front of the clubs from whom I had received fliers…” – Jonathan Gitelson

Colleen Plumb

Work from Animals are Outside Today.

“I began this project in 1997 looking at ‘fake nature’, wondering what substitutions for nature can satisfy in people. Looking deeper I began photographing real animals and how they can be a link for us to a world far from the reality and pace of contemporary life, as well as provide an intangible link to a deeper world of instinct and rawness.

Growing up in Chicago gave me an urban childhood: running through gangways and exploring alleys with my friends. Something more and more kids today don’t experience. Early on, seeds for my interest in nature were planted through lots of outside play, camping trips, and odd pets. I am sure these beginnings influence and inspire my work.

This series of photographs examines the essence of our connection, as well as our fragmentation from the natural. I am interested in the ever increasing disconnection that exists between humans and the natural world. The work explores simulation, consumption, destruction, and reconstruction as well as notions of endurance and the reality of loss.” – Colleen Plumb

Jason Salavon

Work from 100 Special Moments.

“Jason Salavon selects as source material groups of images from popular culture—real-estate listing photographs, Playboy centerfolds, high-school yearbook portraits—and blends them into generalized images characteristic of types existing in everyday life.

…

Salavon chose to blend pictures of not-so-average women in his series Every Playboy Centerfold. By fusing 120 centerfolds from each decade in the 1960s – 90s, Salavon created blurred compositions emphasizing predominant characteristics of the typical Playboy model: long hair, light skin, thin body, radiant against a bluish background. Presented as a series, the pictures reveal the thinning, lightening, and increased frontality of the playmates over the years.

All of Salavon’s amalgam series depend on the digital capacity to treat every pixel individually and operate the mathematical formula for averages on miniscule color elements. Yet the technological precision used to produce his pictures is counterbalanced by their hazy, impressionistic form. The final compositions, significantly abstract, reveal cultural generalities as they hint at the glut of information, manipulated and generated by digital mediums, that has become a powerful reality of contemporary life…” – Karen Irvine

Paula Muhr

Work from Tata.

“Through the work “Tata” I investigate various modes of representation and role models which we internalise in such an extent that they inform our subjectivity. I turn my father (Serbian: tata) into a kind of amateur fashion model asking him to pose for me in his favourite clothes. He dresses himself up strike poses in front of my camera in an attempt to present all for him important aspects of his predominantly macho identity: successful businessman, tennis champion, gentleman, adventurous skier.

I stage his game of posing on different locations in and around our family house. The images are made as a reference to both fashion photographs and family album snapshots. The important difference lies in the fact that my father strikes poses, which are an amalgam between his normal postures and his interpretation of the expected attitudes of professional fashion models. Therefore, the resulting images, although staged, retain certain qualities of family snapshots.

My father’s identity is at the same time revealed and concealed as he acts out his dominant roles. By imitating images from mass media with which he strongly identifies my father tries to create an illusion of ideal life in which he strongly believes – a still rather fit and agile elderly gentleman who can effortlessly adapt to just about any male role. By overacting his roles he unconsciously deconstructs his own ideals.” – Paula Muhr

Jason Lazarus

Work from his oeuvre.

“Regarding all photographic projects cumulatively, I am interested in the role of the contemporary artist as hell-raiser, prophet, failure, and historian. Whether it is the possibilities of the conceptual self-portrait, the awed irony of an American attending an airshow in 2006, or a picture of a picture, the photographic investigation of personal histories as well as contemporary society act as a foundation to investigate our individual and cultural obsessions.

Statement: Self Portraits as an Artist
The self-portraits as an artist series features conceptual self-portraits that playfully examine the ambiguous role of a contemporary artist. From seducer, savant, slacker and rebel to pundit, cultural critic, art historian and prophet, the mass public and artists themselves both tend toward differing caricatured views of the same role.

In America specifically, the products of artists have a hard-to-define value to an economically obsessed culture. These images are meant to simultaneously confirm and disrupt our expectations of artists.

Through an artistic process that is part document and part construction, the images invite the viewers to witness the artist’s constant confrontation as an individual (artist) in the world. As the images become less overt in the series, the viewer is asked, through the lens of a conceptual self-portrait, to complete the image for themselves and infers a beckoning to share the act of ‘looking’ with the artist.” – Jason Lazarus

Céline Clanet

Work from Un mince vernis de réalité [A thin layer of reality].

“In this work, I do not picture anything that comes within the event, the extraordinary, or even the anecdotal. Few subjects are filling these images : things or people, most of them are isolated, lost in a moment of silence. These solitary reveries are broken with landscapes, as if they were taking place each time in a new scenery.

Travel, mobility and stillness mix up, providing a pretext for contemplation.
This is about inviting to see the smallest fissure of reality, its slightest crack that would let us see its unexpected fragility.

The photographic medium helps me to gather these moments in which reverie’s solemnity takes place.” – Céline Clanet

“[…] This artist’s universe is built upon the will to shape a dialogue between woman and nature. When appears the car’s symbolic icon (this commonplace object synonymous with the woman herself, shall we believe), it is abandoned, in hibernation, the object is set apart as the women’s body deepens into meditation. A meditative state on which the artist contantly insists by setting up a parallel between the woman and the home area, the forest area, the sea area and finally the male trophy that nobody ever conquered (the abandoned reindeer antlers), and that rottens without having ever fought. The woman that we assume to be old, turns away from this improbable seduction attribute, as if she would turn away from a painful past.

Céline Clanet is not one of those who forsake the thread of metaphors : the forest is now inhabited, and it let us see the living calf gazing at us, its body tensed as if surprised by the hunter, from whom it remains out of reach. […]” – Michel Poivert