PHOTO: Cai Dongdong-A Game of Photos

Born in Tianshui, Gansu, in 1978, Cai Dongdong joined the People’s Liberation Army at a young age, taking up a role as a portrait photographer for enlisted soldiers. This job became his formal training in the medium, developing into a career path as he returned to Beijing and opened his own studio. Through the use of archival, found photography, and installation, Cai creates half-fragmented realities. Taking readymade materials – a nod to Duchamp’s Dadaist sensibilities – he pierces through the skin of these photographs with mirrors, arrows, and other objects, forming what he calls “photo-sculptures”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Urs Meile Archive

Cai Dongdong presents “A Game of Photos”, his first solo exhibition is Switzerland, both in Galerie Urs Meile’s spaces in Lucerne and Zurich. As an artist who takes photography and installation as his major creative media, re-creating based on ready-made photographs, either taken by himself or collected by him, has always been Cai Dongdong’s main approach. Aiming at the complex cultural aspects behind, he brings “photography” into the intricate, problematic field of the image history or image-making history, discussing issues such as the essence of presentation and the power dynamic of viewing. This exhibition focuses on some of the most iconic photographs and installations from his work series “A Game of Photos” from recent years. For Cai Dongdong, perhaps his “interest” firstly means the pleasure of deconstruction – deconstructing the original context of the image and the ideological dissemination behind it. In his years of photo experiments, Cai Dongdong has continuously led the secluded historical images to escape from the established references, liberating themselves from the sealed narrative, and rekindling their folded potentials. His approach is also imbued with his characteristic linguistic experimentation and improvisational play. In “Fruit Picking” (2022) he replaces some of the peaches on the photograph with small mirrors to achieve the effect that “the peaches really look like they have been plucked out of the photograph”. Cai Dongdong’s works are free from the burden of history, light in technique but serious in gesture. In his creations, the grand narrative of history is descended to an individual perspective, the trajectory of the story quietly distorted by serial disruptions, and the intention of the image organically rearranged by shift enlightenment. The wit and humor are not the only consoling qualities in his works, but also the resonance with the vivid life experience of several generations of people, which conveys a profound dialectical reflection between the theory of individual existence and the dynamics of the times. “On Fire” (2022) comes from a negative collected by the artist. The content is related to the ravaged “Destroy the Four Olds”* campaign launched in the 1960s, in which families took out their antiques and paintings and burned them in public. Cai Dongdong lit a fire on top of the fire, as if the fire in the picture had set the whole photo ablaze. Using photos as working materials, Cai Dongdong’s own photography soon became depleted. He started his journey to collect vintage Chinese negatives from the past, gathered them from flea markets or yard sale, and brought them back to the darkroom to be re-processed. By manipulating the photographs in various ways – curling, sanding, transplanting, scraping, tearing, burning, etc. – to discover a certain “dramatic structure” behind the rigid images and to give them a new vitality. The labor of the hands leaves traces on the works, bringing in the temperature and attitude of the human being. “Queue Training” (2023) presents a group of girls in military training. The People’s Liberation Army is instructing them to march in perfect manner, which means that everyone’s feet should be lifted to form a line, so the artist followed this logic and added a real red line in front of their feet to the photograph, and then used a stone to drop it down next to the photo to straighten the line. Cai Dongdong’s works are gradually unfolded around the subject and relationship of viewing. The implantation of mirrors and camera lenses in his works acts not merely as a superficial visual intervention, but also subverts the unidirectional movement of viewing. The strewn, indiscriminate display injects a whiff of whimsy into this otherwise examination and retracing of history. The photographs, carefully selected and arranged in a playful yet meticulous manner, appear absurd, but these subtle visual elements often manage to confront the audiences in the most unbiased way. They work to inspire reflections and raise questions on these subjects. “Military Exercises” (2022 (2/3) shows militiamen practicing shooting airplanes. They are carrying rifles and aiming at the sky. Cai Dongdong developed the photo again in reverse, spliced them together, and then put a camera lens in the center, so that the picture becomes a shot of them shooting at the lens.

^* The Four Olds was a term used during the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guards in the People’s Republic of China in reference to the pre-communist elements of Chinese culture they attempted to destroy. The Four Olds were: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits. The campaign began in Beijing on 19/8/1966, shortly after the launch of the Cultural Revolution.

Photo: Cai Dongdong, The Stars of Last Night, 2021, silver gelatin print, watercolor, LED light box, 40.5 x 40.5 cm, edition of 5 + 1 AP, © Cai Dongdong, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile

Info: Galerie Urs Meile, Rosenberghöhe 4m Lucerne, Switzerland, Duration: 7/12/2023-17/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00 & Galerie Urs Meile, Rämistrasse 33, Zurich, Switzerland, Duration: 8/12/2023-20/1/2024, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.galerieursmeile.com/