THE INTANGIBLE REALM
by Sand Wan
Sand Wan
He was a fine-art photographer and a member of the Chinese Canadian Artists Federation of Vancouver. He was born in 1949 in Hong Kong and graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic with a Foundation Design Certificate. While he was in Hong Kong, he was engaged in the publishing business and graphic design. His works have won numerous awards in Hong Kong and international design competitions. In 2013, his photography entitled The Beauty of Immortality: Reincarnation of Driftwood exhibited by the Gallery Cathedral Place in Vancouver. In 2015, a solo exhibition The Passing of Time at the city hall of Richmond. In 2016, his solo exhibition Guei Hou was at the Viridian Gallery in Vancouver.
Steven Dragonn
Steven Dragonn is a visual artist and curator based in Vancouver and Guangzhou China. Graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in China with a BFA and from University of Paris East in France with a MA, he is director, curator and founder of Canton-sardine. He is a beyond-Conceptualist and Neo Hyper-real Pictorialist across communicatics and personal visual experience. Specifically, he dedicated his work to examining political and social injustice, while his main curatorial interests include individual experience, migration of minorities, minor gender, personal identities, and social political sufferance.
The Exhibition
Before Modernism came on the scene, people's pursuit of art mostly rested on aesthetic judgement. Since beauty can arouse emotions, it was thought to be the source of art. Reflecting on the conspiracy behind aesthetics, avant-garde of Modernism made various outlandish attempts to strip naked Beauty and expose the rot inside. Photography, as a form of presentation being considered more scientific and objective at the time, brought a revolutionizing impact
on the matter, and steered art to change direction. It can be said that seeking truth has been one of the most important topics in art since the twentieth century. However, in the process of continuously discovering 'truth,' aesthetic judgement not only hasn't diminished or disappeared, it has, from time to time, come to knock in unexpected ways.
To most art photographers, the correlation between 'beauty' and 'truth' has long been a lingering thought. Since they have no paint brush in hand to draw freely nor a completely clear vision in their mind, everything is taken into the lens wherever their camera turns. Thus, photography
is also a mind-cultivating process like the Buddhists'. In the field of photography, there is often
a saying that photography is the art of reduction. But from Sand Wan's work, photography is not only about the refinement of visual language in the lens but also refinement of the soul--- stripping off ostentation and being at ease.
The Intangible is a collection of photos of beautiful rocks off the northwest coast of Taiwan, which Wan took during his many trips over there and later modified through image editing. The textures and grains of the time-worn rocks appear hyper-real in the delicate light captured by his lens. But he wasn't satisfied. With image editing, he rebuilds the perspective and a sense of space around the objects, creating a wonderful balance between reality and aesthetics. The final result is both concrete and abstract, real and illusive, just as the great Chinese Painter Qi Baishi once said, "The subtlety lies between resemblance and non-resemblance."
Somehow, Wan doesn't simply attain 'non-resemblance' for the sake of it. As we look back, both of his previous albums, Immortality and Finn Slough, are in the style of poetic realism. Strong photogenic sense and unique Schlieren method were applied to express the photographer's inner emotions, and the somewhat desolate textures convey a subtle grief. They are in the vein of Ansel Adams's and Edward Weston's highly detailed photography of still life and landscape, and also possess elements of Eugene Smith's humanistic empathy. Whereas, when it comes to the Intangible, Wan attempts a metamorphosis from the accumulated quantitative changes. He forgoes a photographer's obsession about realism and freely pursues the poetic aspiration in his heart---an intangible realm where there are no external scenes but the ones created in one's mind. By taking 'no way' as the way and conjuring up visions beyond the pictures, his work looks intangible yet concrete, illusive yet real. One is at ease where there are no bounds.
