Installation view at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China, 2016
People in the Snow #1
People in the Snow #2
People in the Snow #3
People in the Snow #4
On October 27, 1925, the German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who settled in Valais, Switzerland, wrote in his will to Nanny Wunderly-Volkart: “I should prefer to be laid to rest in the lofty churchyard of the old Church of Raron. Its enclosure was one of the first places from which I experienced the wind and light of this landscape.”
Almost a century later, Jiehao Su, just arrived in Valais, visited the grave of Rilke. Perhaps it was the spirit of Rilke which led him to abandon his original plans to show the impacts of human activities on the Alps. He eventually decided to follow his personal perceptions and explore the invisible soul of the place beyond mundane daily life. Details of nature, everyday situations, and symbols of historical memories and cultural Valais form a kind of trilogy, an overview that reveals the spirit of the region.
This project includes some 20 photographs, a video recording, and over a dozen emails the artist selected from his extensive correspondence with Sarah in Switzerland. These specially selected texts on daily topics and the accompanying images, detached from their original communicative contexts, are beautiful and poetic renderings of everyday language. The temporal, dialogic, and subjective dimensions of these emails resonate with the artist’s visual language and Rilke’s poems, forming a delicate web of intertextuality, through which, Jiehao Su aims to seek a coherent sense of place beyond the visible and the present moment.
Sarah #1
Quatrains Valaisans, XXXI, R.M.R.
Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 32 inches
Waterfall as a Way to Trace Back to a Possible Existing Past
Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 32 inches
Young Swimmers and Their Coach
Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 32 inches
Still Birds
Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 32 inches
Re: visit zoo and waterfall
Laser print on Japanese paper, 18.2 x 25.7 cm
Easter Night
Side Room with a Painting and Lots of Chairs
Birds on Paper
Portrait of an Ornithology Book
Archival Pigment Print, 18 x 24 inches
Display Case with Rilke's Books
Portrait of Yvonne von Wattenwyl
Under the Waterfall
Zinal
Some proposals for excursions
Laser print on Japanese paper, 18.2 x 25.7 cm
A Kind of View
Installation view at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China, 2016
Sarah #2
Proposal for an excursion in Leukerbad
Laser print on Japanese paper, 18.2 x 25.7 cm
People in the Hot Spring
Still Life
Still Birds
Fossils
Installation view at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China, 2016
Empty Seats
Crystal
Bird Specimens
Re: Jiehao Su - The Book of Images
Laser print on Japanese paper, 18.2 x 25.7 cm
Quatrains Valaisans, XXXI, R.M.R.
Young Swimmers and Their Coach
Installation view at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China, 2016