“To The Mountains” by Dany Peschl started as a side project, something that itself was created seamlessly, like the atmosphere that it shows. It is named after a song by a Norwegian black metal band, Satyricon, and inspired by Nordic mythologies. Many of the images contain references to places and events of the lives of Nordic Gods. Their Valhalla is the supermarket. The nightmare haunted Baldr had died and lies wrapped in silk on the ground. The divine horse Sleipnir has fallen. Loki turns his back on his family and hides behind a rock to masturbate. But at the forefront are Dany’s personal encounters and what he summarizes with the words: that’s just me.

Indeed, images of this landscape capture an air of an omnipresent viewer, for whom the reality of the mountains unveils shamelessly. His posture as the observer is firm and he does not look away or judge his motives, his gaze is not frightened. And the humans living in the author’s mountains are not frightened back, they are rooted in these environments and their presence is central to each image’s composition. Although the presence of humans in the mountains usually brings questions of fragility, smallness and unimportance of mankind, in “To The Mountains,” these beings are something that persists. They might be challenged, but their limbs will merge with the limbs of fallen trees or they will inhabit buildings like ghosts, or they will walk away slowly or watch us from their heights.

Dany Peschl is a photographer and visual artist based in Berlin.

Tao Ho is a photographer and musician original from Canton, China. He received his MFA degree from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. He is currently living and working in New York City. His work based on analogue photography and darkroom related, video, also composed music and sound as his side-project as well. Photographs of “Driftwood” are collected from a different time and places; most of them are from the places where Tao has been lived and visited. The body of work was started from test strips while he was working on full-size prints in the darkroom. The small and easily ignored test strip make him think of the driftwood, that it comes from nowhere, and flow to the unknown places, all the marks and scratch would tell their origins. Fragments, traces, blurry initial impressions from the day-to-day usually appear in his mind spontaneously, transiently or long lasting. To him, it’s a way to perceive the inner heart and a projection of psychology through the process.

Qiu is an artist focused on finding the identity of himself. He’s curious about everything that constructed who he is. Hundred years ago, Qiu’s ancestors migrated from the north of China to the south. In this series, Qiu wants to find the home of his ancestors by his intuition. As how the elephants find their graves, Qiu believes that there should be some memories stored in his genes that can lead him to find the homeland.

Qiu(born in Guangzhou, China, 1976) is a photographer based in Guangzhou. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Rencontres d’Arles in France, Three Shadows Photography Art Center in China and Daegu Photo Biennale in South Korea.

On Amiko Li’s series “Maiden Voyage,” photographer Tim Davis writes: “It is a probe, sent to the limits of photographic connectedness.” The images, diary-like in nature, together make an idiosyncratic view of the human experience. “Li draws together images that are strummed on the harp of one sharp-eared young romantic artist, but whose meaning together builds odd harmonic overtones as images pile up. This work is the diary of a vision of the world, not of a person.”

Amiko Li is a visual artist lives between New York and Shanghai. He is the recipient of the Center Project Launch Award Juror’s Choice, PDN The Curator Award, and Royal Ulster Academy Portrait Prize. Exhibitions include Aperture Foundation, New York; LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, New York; Filter Photo Festival, Chicago; Pingyao Photography Festival, China; Thorvald Meyers 51, Norway; Künstler, Australia; Istanbul Photobook Festival, Turkey; and Brighton Photo Fringe, United Kingdom. Publications include Adbusters; Der Greif; Esquire Russia; Juxtapoz Magazine; Mossless; and Lens Magazine China.

Bruno V. Roels is an artist from Belgium. He defined his photographic universe as the triangle between serious German conceptual photography (like the Bechers), sardonic American conceptual photography (like John Baldessari) and poetic Japanese photography (like Masao Yamamoto). ”
In the beginning he emphasized the reproducibly and serial character through almost exclusively grid compositions of multiple, small size prints of a single image. Each time these prints are modified through analogue photographic techniques and often toned to create an image lost in time resulting in unique prints and artworks. Later on, and more frequently, pieces of single, double or triple larger sized prints are included in his work. They enable him to intervene in a more dominant way in the subject matter and to break out of the typical formats that come with the traditional analogue developing process. These works are often enhanced by applying mixed media, especially black Indian ink, on top of these prints to alter them, to subtract them or to add surreal constructions.

Zhang Wei is an artist who currently living and working in Beijing. Mr. Zhang lived in a Chinese theatrical troupe; the living environment enriched his knowledge about various roles at all times and in all countries. As the time changed, the performance of opera changed. The pop, fashion and the other foreign elements were added to the traditional culture and art in China, then showing a mixed and absurd aesthetics in Chinese opera.

In order to show how these external influences affect self-definition. In 2007, he collected more than 300 ordinary portraits of Chinese actors. Mr. Zhang used photoshop to assemble the elements from these portraits. Then he collaged the elements which are similar to the facial features on those famous people to complete new portraits of those celebrities. By making this process, Zhang Wei uses his artificial portraits to put a question to the audience. Where is the real you? We are all the actors.

Save