Besides my personal art practice, I also work with my partner Zhe Zhu as photography duo for editorial assignments. Our Work is very inspired by abstraction. We intent to treat objects as shapes and color blocks so the final images are more about our photography language than the objects themselves.
http://www.jiaxiandzhe.com/

Dead Horse Bay is an abandoned beach which used to be a landfill for New York City garbages. From there, I collect remnants of the past garbages which are already charged with human emotions they have acquired in the practice of everyday life. The objects are transposed to a real space where they become something else. Through my act of lifting, transporting, scattering, suspending, grouping, heaping, arranging, the objects start to lead a new life, which seem to sit between the past and the uncertain future. The images and objects lie between the recognizable reality, and the ambiguous imagination.

Oskar Schlemmer and his Bauhaus associates created an abstract theater of movement, color, light, form, and sound language, most notable his “Triadic Ballet”. He believes using the human figures as an abstract element with a focus on form and color.

“We shall dress one…two…three actors in stylized padded tights and papier-mâché masks. The effect of the tights and masks together is to re­ group the various and diffuse parts of the human body into a simple, unified form. The three actors will be dressed in the primary colors: red, yellow, blue. If we now assign to each of these actors a different way of walking – a slow, a normal, and a tripping gait – and if we let them measure out their space, so to speak, in time to a kettledrum, a snare drum, and wooden blocks, the result will be the “space dance”. If we put cer­tain basic forms, such as a ball, a club, a wand, and a pole, into their hands, and if we let their gestures and movements instinctively follow what these shapes convey to them, the result is what we can call ‘form dance’.”

For me, it is about observing the appearance of everyday objects as actors that would become part of the stage, and study how to dress these objects — with masks, costumes, props or just leave them naked.

I first met Rodrigo at International Center of Photography as classmate at the General Program. His personal project at the time, called Axiom, was really interesting to me. He would arrange garbages on the street and photograph them, transforming them into sculpture still-lifes.

Axiom is a unified vision of the city through the use of materials whose conditions and existence is the byproduct of a demographic phenomena of the city itself. These visual compositions are created through the selection and arrangement of discarded furniture in the streets of New York City. The series documents the juncture where functional domestic furniture begin their new status as garbage and pollution.

Rodrigo Lopez:
Mexican photographer based in New York. He is a graduate of the International Center of Photography (one year program, General Studies). He holds a bachelors degree in Marketing from Universidad Iberoamericana (Gto. Mexico). Hs work has been selected, among others, at the 53rd annual competition at the Masur Museum (USA LA), the A.D Gallery of Pembroke University (USA NC), and the 31st Chelsea International Fine art competition (USA NY).

http://rodlogo.com/

I recently saw a very interesting exhibition in Tokyo, called “ZAKKA -Goods and Things-“, which takes a broad look at the sensibility behind Zakka (things that accompany our everyday life and add a subtle element of decoration) and the environments they occupy, drawing attention to the appeal of their design and appearance.

It raises a few questions that are closely related to my working process.

– What are the uses of things? We can think about a “specific function” which physically helps in the accomplishment of a purpose, and an “abstract action,” through which things themselves impart richness or value to the minds of the people who encounter them or to the locations where they are placed.

– Take an object from a place and strip it of all functionality, it’s meaning and context. Could this object nevertheless have some sort of appeal just for its mere appearance? What is the difference between objects you see and objects you know?

– To reexamine the essence and value of things by taking familiar ready-made and mass produced goods, filing down their surfaces, and striping away the layers that people are used to seeing. When the surface of a daily object changes, what information is it that gets us to recognize it as it was in everyday life?

By going through these questions, I try to discover not only the beauty of objects but also their new value and possibilities.

ZAKKA -Goods and Things-

Date: February 26 – June 5, 2016 | Location: 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo.