Meng Jin & Fang Er

Meng Jin was born in 1973 in Chongqing, China. He represents a generation of Chinese photographers whose creation departs from the criticism and confusion of social lives and focuses on the connection with the past, still too close to the present, and its relations with the present-future. With his ongoing interest in urban life, architecture, memory and found objects, and the inter-relationship between physical buildings, objects and their social context, Meng Jin came to a memory recollection experiement to challenge a perceived reality through distortion of a tangible space with, literally, graphic handling. A school is strongly related to a society. It represents the system, the moral belief and it carries the responsibility to tackle questions of today and pose a question for our future. In the classrooms of an abandoned school, the artist spray-painted colours in the real space then photographed it as is. The interesting composition of colours was free from intention, but somehow recalls the tri-tone colouring on black and white television films in the old days. All the surreal and extravagant colours were "painted" before the shutter was pressed. The physical existence of the material and its interaction with the space, as described by the artist, has replaced any post-production that may otherwise be needed, sketching a space as a completely different object for memory recollection.