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MALEON SOLO EXHIBITION

马 良 Maleonn

2023.10.7 – 11.12

Tokyo

Faramita Flowers – Poetry for unknown from old photos

images generated directly by scanner

 

This is not a photograph, it’s a direct image produced with an industrial grade scanner.

These old photos of Shanghai, printed on rolls of old film some 80 years ago, are of a family living in Shanghai, well groomed and well photographed, but we don’t know who they are. In one photo, a woman is surrounded by flowers called “the other side of the flower”, also known as the other side of the flower Manjushahua, because its leaves do not see flowers, flowers do not see leaves, legend has it that blooms on both sides of the river Styx, is also one of the four flowers of the Buddhist metaphor for cultivation of the fruits of wisdom, wisdom, transcendence of the earthly realm.

Scanner light moving, as the years mercilessly wash the earth, the spring breeze scattered bones, falling red into the dust. The glass of the face and smile, once again illuminated, perishes and becomes a new frame of existence, time closes the door again, the hourglass turns over, this is new, a brand new oblivion.

(This work is a series as a whole, there is no introduction of individual works)

About the artist

马良 肖像 -Benjamin Schmachtenberg 摄影

Born in Shanghai in 1972, Maleonn studied Fine Arts since he was a child. He graduated from Shanghai Huashan Art School, followed by the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University, after which he has engaged in commercial video as an artistic supervisor and director.

In 2003, Maleonn began to dive into photography, organizing more than 40 solo exhibitions around the world and participated in more than 100 important group exhibitions of photography and contemporary art.

In 2012, he created the artistic project Studio Mobile, an ephemeral photography studio in a truck and station wagon. In 10 months, he traveled to 35 cities in China, capturing more than 30,000 wedding photos and family portraits for 1,600 strangers for free. There were more than 20,000 participants.

From 2010 to 2014, he published two collections of essays: The Confessions and Confessions of an Undercover Man, both of which aroused wide interest.

From 2014 to 2017, in order to pay tribute to his father’s suffering from Alzheimer’s and his life spent as a theater director, the artist spent three years directing a large-scale play entitled Dad’s Time Machine, featuring a human-sized puppet. This became the first Chinese work to be selected for the drama unit at the annual congress of International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA).

In the second half of 2017, Maleonn returned to the field of photographic creation.

In 2020, the documentary “Our time machine”, which was filmed in his drama creation, was nominated for the Best Documentary in the American Gotham award.

In 2021, “Our time machine” was nominated again for Best Cultural Documentary at the Emmy Awards. And also in 2021,“Our time machine” was nominated for best documentary at the Gotham independent film award.

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