IFP is excited to present a new exhibition with German artist Sascha Pohle in Black Sesame Space.
On a late 19th century summer’s day, a young French anthropology student received a gift from his professor who had recently visited China. It was a fan, an object common to East, West and everywhere in between. But this fan, made of intricately woven bamboo, was special. A question stuck in the student’s head; ‘who’? Who had made this object? Who had given it to the professor? Who had been cooled by its breeze? It was as if this one everyday object contained fragments of multiple lives. He set it on his desk, continued to mull the lives of his Chinese fan, and began to write. At around the same time, a young German student was given a far more modern tool, a camera. He turned its lens on his focus of study, the architecture of the natural world. Later, as a teacher, he shared these images with his students, and with those who would later gaze in wonder at his book Art Forms in Nature. In 2016 a copy of the same book turned up on the bookshelves of a Beijing artist residency. ‘For M.’ was scrawled inside its cover. As if blown by the flick of a fan, this story starts to circle: A German artist who receives a grant to visit China finds himself flipping through a collection of plant photography found on a bookshelf. In Luoning, Henan, a lady named Lailai weaves bamboo in the fashion of the French anthro-pologist’s fan. The artist sends her images from the book, which she weaves into tangible objects.
Text by Tom Baxter
Opening Aug 26, 4-8pm, Performance at 5:30pm
Exhibition open August 26 - Sept 11
Black Sesame Space
Heizhima hutong 13
Dongcheng District
Beijing