Photo SF, Chinese Artist Network, and Wang Ning De

Before I stopped by Photo San Francisco this Saturday I did not exactly know what I should expect. Hosted by Stephan Cohen gallery and sponsored by 60 galleries and dealers from US and Europe, it was one of the largest such exhibitions in the West Coast. Not to my surprise, I found most works familiar, beautifully framed, and rather boring. There were plenty of works signed with famous but dead names, and it was not unusual to find several different prints from the same negative. San Francisco celebrity artists, such as Michael Kenna, Todd Hiddo and Richard Misrach, dotted a number of the booths. After all, this was a trade show where only “safe”, established, and highly decorative works were appreciated or aimed to be put through transactions. No one takes risks, and most of the attendees probably do not have a taste for edgier and more experimental works. For myself, I hardly learned anything new and quickly forgot most of the images that flashed through my eyes.

However, I did have one good discovery. At one of the booths I found Chinese Artist Network, a newly-formed and loosely-connected Bay Area group which helps to promote photographers of Chinese origins. I have long wondered that such a group might exist, and finding them is almost like finding an adopted home.

They only hang a few works in the booth, but one definitely caught my eyes. It showed two Chinese men in Mao suits standing and dozing off in the backdrop of sky and clouds. The makeup they wore made them look like carders in revolutionary Peking operas. Abby Chen, a lady who sat in the booth, mentioned to me that the photographer, Wang Ning-De, was one of her favorites. I browsed through a zine-like brochure on the desk and got a quick glimpse of a whole body of works from Wang. Somehow these images stuck to my mind.

The internet did not give me more information about Wang other than the short bio listed in the CAN’s website. The same website also showed ten photos of his, which more or less came from the same series. They showed various characters, solo or in group, dozing off against various backgrounds. The moods they created vary too: Some are disturbing, some are cute and humorous. But they invariably give very ambiguous meanings and metaphors. Why are they sleeping in these unlikely situations? What are they dreaming? Or, in one image, you would wonder whether the kid lying on the ground is sleeping or actually dead. Whoever sees these pictures will inevitably face the questions of interpretations. The pictures are obviously staged with great efforts, but the intention is never clear.

Sleepy human figures are not new in Chinese modern art. Fang Lijun, a major player from early nineties, painted a huge yawning face in the heyday of Cynical Realism movement. Several other painters also took the same approach, rendering typicalized Chinese faces with or without expressions, as a way of self-mockery or defiance of the fast-changing realities. Wang’s sleeping figures seem to have taken a cue from that period, but they evolved and expanded the limit of the cynicism. He introduced child nudity, art history reference (the dancing children greatly resembles Matisse’s famous work) and more narrative structures into these images, while all of them form a complete self-referential visual system where time seems to be frozen, sleeping is the norm of existence, and humankind are ever more isolated even if they are in groups. These images somehow depict a space between reality and dreams, and audience can further decipher and decide for themselves what stories they tell and what mood they can convey. The mystery is beyond the words.