“Love Letters No.17” (2011) Archival Pigment Print. 60cm x 90cm - Edition of 8 + 2AP © Jiang Zhi. Courtesy of m97 Gallery.
m97 Gallery No. 97 Moganshan Road 2F 200060 Shanghai Chine
Jiang Zhi’s photographs consistently communicate with the viewer from the mind of a poet or writer. Poignant in meaning and stunning in their visual arrest, Jiang Zhi’s photographs continue to decode the meaning and fragility of the human heart, and are successful in speaking across native cultures to the greater global, human condition. Longing, memory, hope, love, fate, fatality, are all combined in the “Love Letters” series of photographs by the most simple and timeless of elements: flowers and flames.
The contemporary “Love Letters” Jiang Zhi presents here intrigue and surprise in part due to the use of such familiar symbols throughout the history of painting. Flowers, symbols of beauty, nature, purity and love, are consumed by the primal and symbolic fate of flames in which one can sense an equally timeless symbolism as well as violence or anger. Yet the true crux of Jiang Zhi’s “Love Letters” lies in the uncompromised beauty of the flowers, which never perishes, their concept and identity as objects of beauty remain intact, eternal, despite their imminent fate. Love and beauty, Jiang shows us, will also no doubt suffer a similar fate, yet even through the fire of confusion or circumstance or misfortune, the permanence and timelessness of love and beauty remain. These works are not only love letters, they are offerings, and remembrances, rage and consolation.
“Love Letters No.09” (2011) Archival Pigment Print. 60cm x 90cm - Edition of 8 + 2AP © Jiang Zhi. Courtesy of m97 Gallery.
“Beautiful things and objects themselves will ultimately disappear, but the beauty itself will live on, as well as love. Perhaps this is what I am trying to express. This series of works is actually just that, a series of "Love Letters". Beauty, pain, transience and eternity, blossoming and wilting, passion and grace, dedication, giving and sacrifice ……These are all about love.” - Jiang Zhi
“Love Letters No.04” (2011) Archival Pigment Print. 60cm x 90cm - Edition of 8 + 2AP © Jiang Zhi. Courtesy of m97 Gallery.
Photos et vignette © Jiang Zhi