Guanyu Xu

Circulation as Critique: Guanyu Xu’s Itinerant Images

Circulation as Critique: Guanyu Xu’s Itinerant Images

 

Artist Guanyu Xu spoke to Jenny Wu on his artistic practice covering his early work "One Land to Another" to his latest "Traversable Landscape" series.

 

The lens-based art of Guanyu Xu offers a tender critique of the aesthetics of power. Born in Beijing in 1993 and raised in the conservative household of a military officer and a civil servant, Xu grew up entrenched in the signs and symbols of geopolitics and nationalism. At home, he developed a passion for collecting images from Western movies and magazines, a habit he would later unpack and analyze in his work.

 

Photos, he notes, have borders just as nations do, and “framing dictates what we see and know.” At the same time, as his works show, photos are containers of meaning with the power to circulate—at times freely and at times covertly—across time and space.

 

BRIDGE is an artistic collective and “Bridge Art, Nfp” is a NFP, publishing and programming organization.

 

Read the full interview --

https://www.bridge-chicago.org/magazine/guanyu-xu-interview

 

March 6, 2024
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