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Another Side of The River——WangYuanqiang Solo Exhibition

Artist: Wang Yuanqiang
Opening: 2023.3.11   16:00 - 18:00
Duration: 2023.3.11 - 5.12  10:00 - 18:00 Daily Open
Venue: OFOTO&ANART, 2F, Bldg.13, 50 Moganshan Rd., Shanghai, China

Wang Yuanqiang's photos, like a diary, are scattered, aimless, meaningless and themeless words fragments, telling, like a poem, recitation of his return to his hometown. He chooses to photograph the Xin'an River, more than 200 kilometers long, along which some ancient traditions still survive. Around 2014, with an inner image of the river, he started the precursor to the concrete work, casually viewing the river.

“Could only dream of that” has become Wang Yuanqiang's symbol, a kind of his usual suspense tricks. He often chooses a distant perspective to convey his narrative interpretation; farmers walking over an old Bridge and along the river side, working on the hillside, in the paddy field, and in the deep mountains, and eating at the door, all peaceful like spring and like a dream. Here the meaning of "Another side of the river" is restated and becomes the title of this series; The charm of the signifier of the water, the linguistic image created by the signifier of water and the specific signified of Xin'an River leads to the inevitable connection. Interpreting symbols requires familiarity with a set of conventions used to communicate meanings.

If it is a river's obsession, just staying in syntax, it is not only a linguistic problem. There are also emotional components; The dribs and drabs of Xin'an River could be the end of the melancholy love of Wang Yuanqiang.

He always sticks to his hometown, but his photos are homeless, he can't go back to his childhood hometown. Modern technology separates man from the earth,lost and helpless. However, it is a self-comfort to think that people's dwelling is the nature of survival and to photo the unique kind of poetry. Only in the hometown can be close to the origin. Although it is merely a desire to return to the hometown, he tempts to return to the intimacy of his origin.

Wang Yuanqiang's photos have been plain, balanced, and stable; The perspective is like the vision of human eyes, watching on the spot. Many on-site farm trifles and daily work, etc., etc., are not events, but trivial life; In this way, his own visual language is composed in a balanced composition, with sympathy, nostalgia, retrospective, and with the complicated, mixed and miscellaneous aspects that are difficult to return to the past.