Wizard Tang photographed abandoned household items in the neighbourhood hallways, capturing objects that hold the memories of their owners. His work explores the impact of consumerism on ordinary people, offering a view of the material lives of urban dwellers.

‍

Published in issue #3 2024, Invisible Threads

‍

Wizard Tang: I photographed abandoned, old, dusty household items in the hallways of my neighbourhood. These secretive spaces contain objects that hold the memories of their owners. My works engage with the situation of ordinary people involved in the wave of consumerism. The discarded and displaced items in the hallway offer us a glimpse of the material life of common urban dwellers in big cities during the process of commercialisation, allowing us to experience their fast-changing states of life.

‍

The clutter that spills out from the private spaces of individual households into the public hallway serves as a poignant metaphor, evoking images of dried fish stranded on the beach of desire when the great tide is on the ebb. This mirrors the rapidly growing desire for consumption in this era. These remnants of desire, after a brief moment of fulfilment, overflow, and revelry, become a norm of enduring insatiability.

‍

The images are scanned into digital files and arranged into deconstructive and distorted collages through the creator’s uninhibited imagination, thus adorning the obsolete everyday objects with a sense of strangeness, thrill, industrial characteristics, and fast-food quality. It enlivens mundane products and dispels the tedium of the commonplace, generally demonstrating a nuanced connection between the real and the fictitious as a form of irony that challenges the realities we all take for granted.

‍

About

Photographer and artist, working and living in Beijing, China. As an independent photographer, he works on commercial photography to support his own creation. He has continued to shoot the Chinese Rock and Roll music scene for more than 10 years. Many personal photography exhibitions of his have been held. Free will and social issues are among the keywords of discussion of his photographic creation.

‍

More information