anothermountainman – "Lanwei"

7 October – 11 November 2012
at Blindspot Gallery and Blindspot Annex, Hong Kong
Opening Reception: Saturday, 6 Oct 2012, 3:00-7:00pm, Blindspot Annex
Artist will be present.


Blindspot Gallery is proud to present anothermountainman’s major solo exhibition "Lanwei" at Blindspot Gallery. Over 40 select works including his most recent unannounced works from Lanwei will be featured, concluding the 6-year long project taken in Asia.


Lan wei was at first a Shanghainese phrase describing aborted buildings, however the terminology has become widely used to characterize event or situation suffering a crippling outcome arise from greed.

Taken over the course of six years (2006-2012), the project started in major Mainland Chinese cities but soon extended to other cities in Asia including Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore. The large format photographs depict scenes of construction projects left aborted due to the bursting of economic bubbles in the previous decade. The images do not reflect solely the issues found in the economic downturns. They also capture the failures in other aspects of people's lives.

"The story is one perhaps of romance, of business failure, of growing old; all are strangely detached, and many are of gloomy scenarios accentuated by the bareness of the surroundings and the defeated postures of the figures…" (1) Koon Yee-wan.


The series consists of both documentary and staged photography, actors or neighbouring inhabitants are placed in surreal scenes of domesticity to create a sense of dejectedness emphasizing the impact of recession on local people. The images attempt to capture the lost dreams of halcyon days, calling into question our relationship with these perplexing buildings. The artist also captures people living in lan wei lou (which translates as “rotten end buildings”) which they call home, reflecting not only their living conditions but also a possible future they have at these aborted structures.

(1). Koon Yee-wan, ‘Rotten Buildings’, in Muse, Number 8, 2007, pp89-91


About anothermountainman
anothermountainman (aka Stanley Wong Ping-Pui) was born in Hong Kong in 1960. He is an artist, photographer and designer. He came to international attention with his "redwhiteblue" series, which he presented at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 representing Hong Kong. He was recently awarded the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2011 - Award for Best Artist (Visual Arts) and the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards 2012. He currently lives in Hong Kong.

About Blindspot Gallery
Blindspot Gallery is set up to bring contemporary photography, an art form that has entered the blind spot of the Hong Kong art scene, to a higher degree of visibility. We feature both established and emerging photographers and artists, mainly from the region but also beyond.