SHCONTEMPORARY - SHANGHAI CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR

SH Contemporary’s signature promotion of photography finds its space in a small yet excellent group of dedicated galleries and in the 2nd edition of the Asia Pacific Photography Prize (APPP).

The 2nd edition of SH Contemporary’s APPP will be awarded to one photographer-artist by a jury of international artists, editors, curators and critics, including Erik Kessels, Francesco Zanot, Maurizio Anzeri and Peng & Chen.

Sunday the 9th, the winner of the second edition of the Asia Pacific Photography Prize was anounced: artist Wen Ling represented by Star Gallery, Beijing

Trained in printmaking, Wen Ling (Beijng, 1976) quickly adopted photography as his medium of choice after a job as a photographer atJinghua Daily. The post also inspired him to nurture the habit of never leaving the house without his digital camera. This evolved into a lifestyle, and the basis of a longtime project and obsession: his photoblog, Ziboy.com, China' s first photoblog, where he used snapshots style photography to capture the daily life of the people around him, street scenes, classmates and dinners, outdoor concerts, summer games – anything that crossed his path. Ziboy.com is a visual record of activities for local friends, and for an international audience the first glimpse of an “average” lifestyle through the eyes of a native.

The prize was awarded to Wen Ling by a jury composed by Erik Kessels, Francesco Zanot, Maurizio Anzeri and Peng & Chen, and chaired by Defne Ayas, co-director of Arthub Asia and director of Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.

Erik Kessels is co-founder and creative director of communications agency KesselsKramer, with offices in Amsterdam and London. The company believes in finding new ways for brands to tell stories using whatever media is most relevant to their message. Kessels designed, edited and published several groundbreaking books of vernacular photography through KesselsKramer Publishing –including the in almost every picture series, The Instant Men and Wonder. Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative magazine Useful Photography. He curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie Arles and was one of four curators (with Vince Aletti, Lou Reed and Fred Ritchin) of the New York Photo Festival 2010, where he presented the exhibition Use me Abuse me. KesselsKramer worked and is working for national and international clients as well as on exhibitions by prestigious artists. kesselskramer.com - kkoutlet.com - kesselskramerpublishing.com

Photography critic and curator Francesco Zanot has been working with some among the most renowned European and international photographers. His most recent collaborations are with Alec Soth (Triennale, Milan), Olivo Barbieri (Palazzo Ducale, Genova), Takashi Homma (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa). He curated several photobooks by artists such as Mark Cohen (Italian Riviera, Punctum Edizioni), Guido Guidi (Fiume, Fantom Editions), Charlotte Dumas (Al Lavoro!, Fantom Editions) and his essays have been published on various monographs and catalogues. His next contributions will appear on books dedicated to the works of Joel Meyerowitz (Phaidon), Luigi Ghirri (Mack Books) and Alec Soth (Contrasto), and on the 4-volume series Photography, a new history of  the medium published by Skira. Director of the Master in Photography and Visual Design organized by Forma (Center for Photography) and NABA (New Academy of Fine Art) in Milan, he is also lecturer of History of Photography at IULM University, Milan. He participated to conferences and seminars on the theory and history of photography in different universities and schools, such as Columbia University, New York, Politecnico di Milano, and the American Academy in Rome. He is associate editor of Fantom, a photographic quarterly based in Milan and New York.

Artist Maurizio Anzeri in 2005 received his MA in sculpture from The Slade School of Fine Arts, London, the city where he has been living for the past 25 years. Anzeri mostly works with discarded photographic portraits which he brings back into existence with exquisite embroideries. A celebration of forgotten lives, his work transforms straight portraits into a three-dimensional objects with an intense psychological dimension. He had solo show at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (UK), Q Forum in London, Rupert Pfab Gallery in Dusseldorf (Germany), Luce Gallery in Turin (Italy), Riflemaker Gallery in London and Galleria Image Furini in Arezzo (Italy). Recent group shows include The Photographic Object at The Photographer’s Gallery London, British Art Now at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (Russia), British Art Now and Out Of Focus-  Photography Now, both at the Saatchi Gallery in London, and Makeup, curated by Mariuccia Casadio for A Palazzo Gallery in Brescia (Italy). His work is in important public and private collections, including Saatchi (UK), Fondazione Giovanni e Marella Agnelli (Italy), Gagosian (USA), Rothschild (USA), Ivor Braka (UK), Statoil (Norway), Missoni (Italy), The Museum Of Everything (UK), Alexander McQueen (UK), Galila Barzilai Hollander (Belgium), Museo Cantonale di Lugano (Switzerland), Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf (Germany).

The work of Peng & Chen (Chen Jiaojiao and Peng Hyangjun) focuses mainly on photography, publishing, editing and art direction. They are currently creative directors and editors of The Outlook Magazine, China's leading creative lifestyle magazine (published by Modern Media Group). Previously, they worked as creative directors and editors-in-chief of Colors, the magazine of Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research centre in Italy; creative directors and brand directors for Yifei Media; creative directors and editors of Vision city books and chief photographers for Vision magazine; art directors and editorial directors of Zing magazine; creative directors and editors of Hermes Shang Xia cultural and art series. They also cooperated with Singapore publisher, Page One, and British publisher, Southbank, to produce books of creative brands A-Z, and were invited by Shanghai MOCA to curate Unseen, an exhibition of  emerging international photographers. theoutlookmagazine.com

The jury is chaired by Defne Ayas, co-director of Arthub Asia and director of Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. wdw.nl - arthubasia.org

The 2nd edition of SH Contemporary'sAsia Pacific Photography Prizewill be awarded to one photographer-artist by an international jury composed by Erik Kessels (creative, editor, publisher and curator), Francesco Zanot (historian and critic), Maurizio Anzeri (artist) and Peng & Chen (creative directors and editors).