Exhibition
Peng Ke
I’ve seen many people although they’ve never seen me
Duration_ September 22–October 27, 2018
Opening_ Saturday, September 22, 4–7 PM
Artist talk_ Saturday, September 22, 4 PM
Opening_ Saturday, September 22, 4–7 PM
Artist talk_ Saturday, September 22, 4 PM
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Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present Peng Ke’s first solo exhibition I’ve seen many people although they’ve never seen me in Shanghai from September 22 to October 27, 2018. During the artist talk held in the gallery on the reception day, Peng Ke will discuss her newly released photography book Salt Ponds (Jiazazhi Press) and her new installation works created for this exhibition. At the same time, part of her photography works will be exhibited in Arcs - Xitek 2018 New Talent Photography Award Special Exhibition in PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai.
I’ve seen many people although they’ve never seen me is Peng Ke’s experimental practice wandering between images from photography book and personal experiences from the reality. This exhibition expands from her photography works in Salt Ponds, which is an attempt to consider how photos could be read independently and stand on their own; to discuss how photos could make scenes last forever so as to constantly reflect different psychological states of people living in fast developing cities. Similar to Peng’s photography works, her installation works in this exhibition are firmly rooted in reality but with unexpected logic. In this exhibition, she reconstructs situations between the familiar and the unfamiliar by combining the extracted daily scenes with her photography works. She believes things from the reality can be possibly regarded as her materials for creation, such as different unique ways of hanging and drying clothes in China and large-scale light boxes for commercial advertisement. She utilizes Longmen frames — a common and old-fashion way of hanging and drying clothes in Shanghai — and light box to bring scenes out from the real life to the photography book and then present them within a defamiliarized context in the gallery space. I’ve seen many people although they’ve never seen me intends to suggest psychological effect on the people through their different living situations, different ways of looking at things and different languages of self-reflections. Peng Ke was born in Changsha, Hunan, in 1992. She works with images and writes, while living between Los Angeles and Shanghai. Graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Photography, she received Magnum Foundation and ChinaFile's Abigail Cohen fellowship in 2017. She published her photography book Salt Ponds and was given the New Talent Award in 2018. Her recent solo/two-person exhibitions include: The Secured (Salt Projects, Beijing, 2018), Underneath the Tree Where I Buried All My Childhood Pets (Gallery 50, Toronto, 2017), and Leaky Logic and a Fugitive Fish (Red Eye Gallery, Providence, 2015). Her work has been exhibited in The 3rd Beijing Photography Biennial, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Aperture Foundation, Filter Photo, Gallery Kayafas, etc. She received fellowships and was an artist-in-residence at Center of Photography at Woodstock, ACRE and The Lighthouse Works. |
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