In Chen Wei's moody night scenes, the party's over and everyone has gone home. A couple of disco balls have crashed to the floor looking like globes of planets built and populated by robots. In two other images, empty imported and native Chinese beer bottles mix listlessly around a bar top, and the neon signs of a karaoke bar, the "Night Paris," become abstract swathes of color reflected in puddles on a rainy, deserted street.
The prints in this young Chinese artist's first solo exhibition in Japan are big and visually seductive, a seeming necessity in the contemporary art photography market. In their defense, the size is a cue to take your time and look closely, which is obligatory if you want to understand why these images are being shown in a fine art gallery that doesn't usually deal with photography.
Chen Wei creates his work in the studio, carefully constructing models and dioramas, which are then photographed in controlled lighting conditions. The work is meticulous, and the artifice largely concealed rather than highlighted, in contrast to, for example, sculptor and photographer Thomas Demand's paper and cardboard interiors. Earlier works by Wei, two of which are hanging in the office of the gallery but not part of the main series, show the influence of Canadian artist Jeff Wall in his practice, which Wei is happy to acknowledge. The colorful play of different artificial light sources is reminiscent of Rut Blees Luxemburg's night photography, and each picture luxuriates in exploring a main color and related hues, as the glow from fluorescent tubes and neon signs either trails off into darkness, or morphs into other tones.
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