Yao Lu's New Landscapes

In the exhibition "Yao Lu's New Landscapes", Istanbul Modern Photography Gallery presented photographs by Yao Lu, one of the key figures to have introduced contemporary Chinese photography to the world. 11 of the 31 works on view were created exclusively for this exhibition.

Winner of the 2008 BMW Paris Photo Prize, Yao Lu has photographed mounds of garbage covered in green protective nets and reworked them by computer to re-create Chinese painting aesthetics. By digitally adding pagodas, houses, boats, interesting trees onto the photos he took at these sites he produces meticulously created landscapes.

By creating compositions and layouts that reflect the forms of traditional Chinese painting, the artist conveys the process of modernization and change that contemporary China is undergoing. Works in the exhibition were inspired by the similarity between heaps of garbage and debris covered with protective green cloths in construction sites in China and green mountain and water paintings of the Song Dynasty. Reviving tradition through a new perspective, Yao Lu aimed to invite us to think about the relation between tradition and reality while reflecting the great change currently experienced in China in the exhibition.

Curator: Engin Özendes