zhu yunwei : portraits. I took two pictures for each person; one with opened eyes, the other with closed eyes ...............................................................................................











zhu yunwei: portraits

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'this collection of photographs are taken from a project
I completed last semester: 'black and white / dark and light'.
under the tuition of prof. hansjerg maier-aichen.

at the beginning, I planned to do some very basic experiments
to convey some common emotions.
me, a young chinese student, who'd just arrived in a completely
different country, experienced some strong, deep cultural conflicts.
living overseas resulted in the different way of thinking for me
whilst working on this project.
(a common theme expressed in artworks by other chinese artists
such as xu bing or miao xiaochun.)
I’m also interested in the 'everyday' people and day-to-day life,
- common things that have a complicated inconsistency.
in my works, I show two entirely incompatible states at the same time
two states of consciousness. I believe these basic states are just
like the simple contrasts - black and white. I chose the portrait format.
the face is the most direct and basic element / inter-medium of
human expression.
expressions such as laughter have a universal meaning
and are metaphorical all over the world. I have taken many
pictures of different people in the studio at my college.
these people are of different ages, different backgrounds and
countries of origin.
it is an ongoing project, as there are many expressions I'd still
like to capture.

opened / closed eyes
each portrait consists of two portrait shots.
I took two pictures of each person - one with opened eyes,
the other with closed eyes.
I then integrated the two pictures into one portrait,
resulting in the calm but unnatural expressions seen here.
human beings wake up and open their eyes in the morning,
close their eyes and fall asleep at night, these are which the two
normal states of everyone.

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about me
zhu yunwei, born in 1982 in handan, china.
at age of 9, I moved to beijing with my parents.
since 2006, I study product design at the staatliche
hochschule fuer gestaltung / university of design,
karlsruhe, germany.



zhu yunwei, self portrait


african boy




shan




aki




paci




peter




laura




chinese girl




zhong nv




chinese girl




siewertt




katerina




krisdorf




herr pang
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