ISTVAN VIRAG
Mark

Yujiapu Mirage (2020)


Yujiapu Mirage (2020) depicts a highrise building in the city of Tianjin, China, that is brightly lit by architectural LED lighting. The photo was taken with an analogue large format camera by deliberately extending its bellows and pushing the focal length beyond infinity – that resulted in an image completely out of focus. With this gesture I wished to remove all details from the photo and create a generic image – an archetype of the thousands of highrise buildings that have been built in China in the last two decades of unprecedented economic growth. Yujiapu Mirage (2020) is a reflection to this trend as well as an homage to Hiroshi Sugimoto's series Architecture (1997-2002). The photo is printed on semi-transparent material, and displayed in a custom-made LED light box. By using LED lightbox as display, the work becomes a sample of artificial light in the gallery space – creating a bodily experience of being exposed to this type of light.