Fotofest

Wang Qingsong is Capture’s inaugural Printing Prize recipient. The Capture Printing Prize is generously supported by Wesgroup.

While positioned as cultural celebrations, photography festivals have steadily become more commercial in nature. In China, this phenomenon of conflating culture and commerce is referred to as “culture performed on the stage built by economy.” Increasingly influenced by contemporary Western culture, life has become more uncanny, and ironic in China; Wang Qingsong’s work is deeply engaged with these shifts in cultural life in contemporary China.

Using images as weapons and photography as his medium, Qingsong’s work attempts to subvert a kind of criticism of reality in order to let people find humour when facing his works, so as to experience the absurd essence in this confrontation. In his exhibition Fotofest, a title taken from Wang’s work of the same name, he asks viewers to consider the rapidly changing tenor of contemporary Chinese society through photography, employing grand scales, civilian perspectives, and gaudy popular aesthetics, combined with painting and staging amongst other visual languages.

This exhibition contains work that may not be suitable for some viewers.