The gallery of visual inspirations:
Michael Wolf's postcards from Hong Kong (2017)
Life in cosmopolitain cities: quick interactions in the public areas, insignificant smiles, somewhat crucial small talks with inhabitants, coworkers or bar tenders. City is a big web and physical network, where we can allow ourselves to think stronger, create with more experimentation, follow our dreams or even fail. After having lived in some small cities for almost a year and a half, I start seeing the advantages of both: remote areas and dense surroundings and the discourses that each of them bring along. The relationship that we create with other people, places, the languages that we speak, the questions we raise.
If in a small towns we still choose what stands where and how we assemble the worlds around us, meanwhile in the metropolitan environments everything has to fit together. The is place for each of us, but we have to find it. The passing time, ideologies and revolutions, everyday patterns and accidental aesthetic choices create layers on top of each other, allowing the eclectic being in the world, the randomness without further explanation, the chance and freedom. Not without a fight.
The photos of Michael Wolf illustrate the beehive-like life of a big Asian city of Hong Kong. Even in the cold and functional universe of concrete and glass, where moonlighting seems inescapable, people are not able to let go their personal stories and lusts. Everything must fit together: the water tubes with mosaic walls, DIY cardboard chairs in the corner of streets or Yves Klein performed by the fast food restaurant workers.
If in a small towns we still choose what stands where and how we assemble the worlds around us, meanwhile in the metropolitan environments everything has to fit together. The is place for each of us, but we have to find it. The passing time, ideologies and revolutions, everyday patterns and accidental aesthetic choices create layers on top of each other, allowing the eclectic being in the world, the randomness without further explanation, the chance and freedom. Not without a fight.
The photos of Michael Wolf illustrate the beehive-like life of a big Asian city of Hong Kong. Even in the cold and functional universe of concrete and glass, where moonlighting seems inescapable, people are not able to let go their personal stories and lusts. Everything must fit together: the water tubes with mosaic walls, DIY cardboard chairs in the corner of streets or Yves Klein performed by the fast food restaurant workers.
Vilde Rolfse's Plastic Bag Landscapes (2016)
We talk a lot about the visual culture and the imprint images have on us, on our perceptions. W.J.T. Mitchell once wrote a text which is actually called "There is no visual media", as to make the readers aware, that there's no such think as "pure" form of visual arts. What we see on TV (it you still have one), or on our PC screen (more likely), what we perceive as printed books, postcards or shop receipts, might be considered to be optical mirages, or mirrors or pictorial representations, but these are not "pure", but always related to the touch, taste, hearing and other senses. With specific dosages, mixtures and recipes for a better "spectacle".
I like seeing at things. The desire is born each time I look at the image. A desire of getting tactile, intellectual or emotional.
The Plastic Bag Landscape series is an illustration of a place, where mind meets the Eye, and is not yet stopped at this point.
Vilde Rolfsen did other things you might like to glance on.