SHCONTEMPORARY - SHANGHAI CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR

In 2012, the 2nd edition of The Asia Pacific Photography Prize will highlight the work of artists working in the medium.

In 2011, the international jury composed by Olivo Barbieri (artist), Christopher Phillips (curator, International Centre of Photography, New York), Emma Reeves (photo editor and curator, London and New York) and Shaway Yeh (editorial director, Modern Weekly magazine, China), and chaired by Defne Ayas of Arthub Asia, announced that the 5,000 euros of the SH Contemporary 2011 Asia Pacific Photography Prize (APPP) was granted to Beijing based artist Chen Wei (b. 1980, Zhejiang Province, China), presented by M97 Gallery, Shanghai.

Chen Wei was chosen for his original language - constantly engaged in a dialogue with the tradition of staged photography - and for his impressive presence at the fair.

Chen Wei, born in 1980, Zhejiang Province, China, currently lives and works in Beijing.

"About my working process: In the preliminary work, I sort out some ideas; then I refer to relevant information and make sketches. Finally I prepare to realize my sketches. Sometimes I need to work indoors building a scene; other times I only need to prepare a few objects. During this phase there will be many adjustments, and then I begin shooting. After shooting the film, I do a wash then scan to a computer, modify the colors and fine-tune. The final step is to print the photo. I try to complete most of my work manually, but in cases where it’s not possible, I use computers as a solution."

The jury of the first edition (2011) of the Asian Pacific Photography Prize (APPP):

Olivo Barbieri was born in Italy in 1954. Since 1971 he developed an interest in photography concentrating his research initially on artificial illumination in European and Oriental cities. From 1989 he has regularly travelled to the Far East, especially to China. In 1993, 1995 and 1997 he participated to the Venice Biennale. In 1996 he held his first retrospective at the Folkwang Museum in Essen (Germany). In the mid-nineties, he adopted a new photographic technique, allowing him to maintain into focus only certain areas of the image: the landscapes photographed, often from aboard a helicopter, come across as a series of scale models providing surprising and estranging visions. In 2003 Barbieri starts the ongoing project site specific_ which involves several cities: Rome, Turin, Montreal, Amman, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Seville, New York, San Francisco, Brasilia, Bangkok, Detroit, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City… His works are included in public and private collections and museums in Europe and the U.S.

Christopher Phillips has been the curator at the International Center of Photography in New York City since 2000. In 2004, he and Wu Hung of the University of Chicago organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China." In recent years he has curated such exhibitions as “H20: Art on the Horizon of Nature”  (2010) and “Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide” (2011). He has also served as a member of the curatorial team that organized the 2003, 2006, and 2009 editions of the ICP Triennial of Contemporary Photography and Video. As adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Emma Reeves is a freelance creative consultant working in a broad field from curation to photographic commissioning for brands. Former photographic director at London-based Dazed&Confused, Another Magazine and Another Man she currently lives in New York. She is a contributing editor to Fantom magazine and a regular contributor to T Magazine online as 'The Culturialist'. She is also on the board of the Swiss Institute in New York and from September 2011 will be a lecturer on the newly created MFA course in fashion photography at the SVA (School of Visual Arts, NYC).
Shaway Yeh is the editorial Director (Lifestyle) of Modern Media Group, China’s most prominent independent publishing group. Modern Weekly, the group’s flagship publication since 1995, is China’s most influential lifestyle magazine with circulation close to 750,000. Under Yeh’s editorial direction, it reaches China’s elite readers with the latest internationals news, trends, phenomena and discussion in the fields of style and culture. Yeh moved to Shanghai in 2003, after several years of independent publishing in New York, to prepare for the launch of Vogue China. She later helmed communication in China for Prada before joining Modern media Group in 2005.