Melancholic black-and-white visions of a timeless Beijing await viewers at the Hua Gallery in London until March 12, 2013. Gallery director Shanyan Koder is presenting Xu Yong Retrospective Through the Hutongs, featuring pictures taken by Chinese photographer Xu Yong in 1989.
Xu Yong (b. 1954 in Shanghai) is a self-taught photographer. He studied at the Luoyang Polytechnic, then worked in advertising before devoting himself fully to photography. Xu Yong has been on the Beijing art scene for the past twenty years, and played an important part in the creation of the 798 Art Zone in the city’s northeast. He is also known for his series Solutions (2006), with photographs of long-haired, naked women standing nonchalantly amid groups of businessmen.
His series 101 Portraits of Hutong (1989), depicts the cold and empty streets that seem antithetical to the hustle and bustle of the city. Like a nostalgic flâneur, Xu Yong photographs with melancholic tenderness the decaying gray walls, snow-covered roofs, and small courtyards overrun with plants, all under a veil of loneliness and anxiety.
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Read the full version of this article on the French version of Le Journal.
Xu Yong Retrospective Through the Hutongs
From January 23rd to March 12th, 2013
Hua Gallery
Unit 7B, G/F, Albion Riverside
8 Hester Road, Battersea
London, SW11 4AX
UK
+44 (0)20 7738 1215
