ADOU
A Look Back
March 6 - April 5, 2015

UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL ART FAIRS
The AIPAD Photography Show, New York, April 16-19
Young Art Taipei, April 24-26

M97 is pleased to invite you to the opening of A Look Back, a mini-retrospective exhibition of Adou's three main bodies of work. Spanning eight years of the artist's career, A Look Back examines the creative evolution from the "Samalada" series of evocative portraits of the Yi minority through the introspection of the self-titled "Adou" series, to the poetic "Leaves of Grass", an ode to the ordinary lives of plants.

SAMALADA
I don’t know why I take photographs; if I knew I would not keep taking them. I don’t know the significance of life; if I knew I would not keep on searching. To me, photography is a kind of faith. I believe in photographs more than I believe in myself. This explains why I disdain churches, why I disdain all forms of expression other than photography. When we become a part of the photograph, we do not need to impose our shallow sensibilities to emphasize the greatness of an image. We are just servants of the picture, like insignificant dust in the light. We are so arrogant, apt to become false gods athypocritical moments. However, this is truly who we are, we can also find brilliance in those moments. This is the contradiction…
If this answer has no significance – if you only care about the process – then who can tell us, what is the process? “Don’t turn around, you will turn into stone.” - Text by Adou

ADOU
ADOU
While making photographs in the mountains of Sichuan for his “Samalada” series of portraits, Adou once said “There is no difference between taking a picture of others and myself. The camera may be pointed outward, but whether you like it or not, it always reveals you”.
In the “Adou” series he has decided to do just that: point the camera at himself, the artist, confined, contemplative, exploring the boundaries of meaning in his practice before the film and lens, so that we, the viewer, can see him wildly exploring and experimenting amidst the elements andvast landscapes of remote and rural China. Adou’s works are a return to the landscape, a primitive, isolated and at times vulnerable position for the artistin a desolate world. Part Dadaist and part Existentialist, Adou’s photographs come from a long lineage of performance art but perhaps the wildcard that trumps all these before him is his seriousness towards the camera, film and lens, as well as the dark room techniques and processes he reveres.

LEAVES OF GRASS
In this new body of works, Leaves of Grass，Adou invites the viewer to look at the unimpressive natural world just below our feet. Titled after the famous poetry collection by Walt Whitman, Adou’s “Leaves of Grass” is a lyrical exaltation and reordering of the natural world from discarded scraps and chaos. Part painting and part collage, the natural elements are carefully composed by the artist with allusions to Chinese traditional ink painting and calligraphy.