Opening in presence of Michael Wolf and
European Booklaunch of the book Small God, Big City:
Saturday April 13 from 4 – 6 pm

Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen is pleased to present two new series by Michael Wolf: Architecture of Density / The Scout Shots & Small God, Big City.

Scout Shots are preliminary studies. Michael Wolf takes these with a small, amateur digital camera when he is out looking for suitable locations. They are a digital sketchbook which he uses to decide which places to revisit later. Wolf then uses large format cameras and digital backs for the final image. Michael Wolf (Munich, 1954) won universal recognition and acclaim for his long-standing project on densified architecture in an explosively expanding China. To satisfy the insatiable need for homes and offices, skyscrapers and tower blocks are shooting up everywhere. Because space is so scarce, particularly in Hong Kong, these new buildings stand shoulder to shoulder. Wolf photographed the endlessly repeating patterns of horizontal and vertical lines of the facades with a lens that flattens the image so that all sense of dimension is lost. Nowhere is there a horizon, nor foreground or background, making it is impossible to form an idea of the scale. ‘No-exit compositions’ is the term Wolf uses for these images. He takes his photographs at the end of the working day, when dusk falls and the lights inside are switched on but outside there is still enough light to pick out the detailing on the facades.

What happens when a lesser god, a minor deity from the country, moves to the city with its newcomers? That is the question behind Small God, Big City in which Wolf draws attention to objects in the visually rich and densely built up public space that we so easily overlook. The ‘roadside memorials’ he photographed are shrines to the Earth God which grace the entrances to shops and homes all over Hong Kong. These shrines take on various forms. Mostly, they are clay plaques, wooden panels or some other flat surface inscribed with six different Chinese symbols – mun hau to tei choi shen which in Cantonese means something like ‘at the doorway stands the God to whom we owe the riches of the land’. The shrine is a reminder of the time that the Chinese people were mainly dependent on agriculture.

Once the Earth God shrine was both a trademark and a spiritual object. It marked the presence of a closed community, usually some twenty-five households, all from the same family. They were made of clay then, nowadays of masonry. Wolf finds these in old neighbourhoods and less-trodden back streets. Not in the new high-rise districts where the use of public space is strictly regulated.

Michael Wolf observes the complexity of metropolitan society with curious detachment and raises questions about privacy and the double standard of photographing in public places. An intriguing mix of architectural photography and voyeurism, of the large and small scale, of anonimisation and individualisation.