Li Gang

Li Gang: in the grey scale

Curated by Tony Trembath


Statement

Li Gang is a notable contemporary Chinese artist. Li Gang trained as a sculptor, graduating from Victorian College of the Arts in 1996. Since then he has staked an important place in the fi eld of contemporary Chinese painting. As well as teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, Li Gang is the founding director of the Pickled Art Centre, which operates an artist-in-residence program for Chinese and international artists.

While best known as a sculptor and painter, Li Gang has in recent years turned to photography. Curiously, as digital photography has become dominant everywhere, Li Gang’s photographs employ the materials and technologies of analogue photography: he shoots on fi lm, often using basic 35mm cameras or hand-built medium-format cameras, such as those on display in this exhibition.

The use of these hand-built cameras re-introduces risk and the accident to photography. The artist gives over control of the picture: its framing, focus and lighting are as much a result of chance as the artist’s command of technology or process. Indeed, instead of control and mastery, there is magic and mystery. The photographic darkroom was always a place of magic and mystery, where alchemy and science turned silver halides into pictures.

Tony Trembath