Since January 17, Hong Kong has been transported to London. The Flowers Gallery is holding a solo exhibition of the renowned German photographer Michael Wolf (b. 1954 in Munich) featuring his iconic series Architecture of Destiny.
“I like the visual chaos of China. It’s a dream for any photographer,” says Wolf, who moved to Hong Kong in 1994. His work documents the architecture of big cities and the daily lives of their citizens. In Wolf’s work, apparently insignificant details take on a whole new meaning.
In Architecture of Destiny, one of his most famous series, Wolf shows the extreme population density in Hong Kong, exaggerating the repetition of shapes to disturbing effect. Hong Kong is presented here as a city that had no choice but to build upward. Wolf eliminates the skyline, flattening the image and accentuating the patterns of the infinite lines of abstract shapes. However, his photographs touch on more than architecture. A closer look reveals the faint presence of man: garments drying on makeshift clotheslines, shadows hidden behind windows. Wolf offers a vision through which spaces public and private, interior and exterior, come together to form a strange amalgam, a vision where fear and splendor coexist.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil de la Photographie.
Architecture of density
by Michael Wolf
Until February 22nd, 2014
Flowers Gallery
21 Cork Street
London W1S 3LZ
United Kingdom
[email protected]
+444 (0)20 7929 7777
http://www.flowersgalleries.com
