CAI Dongdong »

Obstacles

3 March – 2 April 2023

On the occasion of the European Month of Photography 2023

Opening: Thursday, 2 March, 5-9pm in the presence of the artist

Artist Talk: Saturday, 11 March, 5pm
Guided Tour: Saturday, 18 March, 5pm
Finissage: Sunday, 2 April, 4pm

Villa Heike

Freienwalder Str. 17, 13055 Berlin
+49 (0)178-4564256
www.villaheike.com
Wed-Sat 2-6pm + by appointment

Cai Dongdong
Aiming at the Camera, 2017
Silver gelatin print, camera, wood
120 x 56 x 50 cm
Courtesy: Sammlung Wemhöner

An arrow pierces a photograph on which a target is depicted - but it does not hit the target, instead it is stuck in the pictorial space between the heads of two men who are also depicted. Looking at the works of Cai Dongdong, one could often think, due to their simple construction, to be quickly finished with the interpretation. But then doubts arise and a complexity unfolds that questions already assumed certainties.

Born in 1978, the Chinese artist learned the photographic craft in the Chinese People's Liberation Army. There, as an administrative soldier, he was entrusted with the tasks of a portrait photographer. This rather unusual career for an artist explains many of his later artistic themes, in which analogies constructed by him between the act of photography and the exercise of violence and power repeatedly play a role. But the question of reality in pictures, which is central to his interest, may also be rooted in his experiences from this period with propaganda images. Finally, his work with an archive of photographic images also seems to grow out of his previous tasks as a military photographer. Cai Dongdong now owns his own photographic archive of several hundred thousand prints and negatives, obsessively collected, mostly amateur shots from all parts of China.

Around 2014, Cai Dongdong began to consider images from his photo archive, but also photos he had taken himself, as material and to use them sculpturally by abrading them, bending them, cutting into them, and then increasingly combining them with objects such as photo lenses or for example an arrow. In some of these constructions, it is the almost naïve humor that paves the way for the viewer's contemplation of the work of art. Often, however, one needs a bit more information about the cultural background or the origin of the images to be able to come to a more profound interpretation of the works. A Game of Photos is a publication from 2021, in which his works from this period are gathered. With this title, Cai Dongdong emphasizes the playful aspect of his work - he pursues a serene game at first sight, but it has hidden hints and a serious background.

Cai Dongdong
Red String, 2020
Silver gelatin print, hand-colored, rope
62.5 x 79.5 cm

In an interview, he answers the question of whether the work is an allusion to the current social situation positively. The word "critical," however, does not appear in any text that can be found about him. He repeatedly uses mirrors in his work, although he says he dislikes them. In the context of a still body-hostile image culture in his country, he mainly uses female nudes as a provocation, but then turns the gaze around, making the act of looking itself the subject of the image, for example by replacing the model's head with a photo lens or mirror, whereby the viewer is in turn observed or mirrored.

Perhaps it is the craftsmanship, the analogue, in his work, when Cai Dongdong touches the photographic paper during development or when cutting into the picture with a scalpel, that is responsible for the emotional familiarity when viewing the works, despite their cultural distance. The people depicted may seem foreign, for they are Chinese citizens, mostly from the bygone era of the Cultural Revolution, about which we had little information even back then. But precisely because the works are not quite so perfect and smooth, showing traces, they establish a kind of closeness that is also transferred to the protagonists in the pictures. So, it is not the pictorial impressiveness of an accomplished photographer that makes us sympathize, but the craftsmanship inherent in the artistic process that ultimately touches us.

The exhibition at Villa Heike is curated by Yasmine Benhadj-Djilali and Michael Schäfer and takes place within the framework of the European Month of Photography in Berlin. We would like to thank the Wemhöner Collection and the Yu Zhang Collection for one loan each.

Cai Dongdong
I Figure, 2003
Silver gelatin print
25 x 37 cm

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