Jonas Yip

Shan Shui: Landscapes Revisited

About the artist

Jonas Yip is a photographic artist based in Los Angeles. He has published two books, Somewhere Between (2017) and Paris: Dialogues and Meditations (2008), in collaboration with renowned poet and scholar Wai-lim Yip. A related exhibition, Paris: Dialogue, traveled through Asia and was also shown at the San Diego Museum of Art. Jonas’s work is in the permanent collections of the San Diego Museum of Art, the National Museum of Chinese Literature in Beijing, and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, CA, as well as numerous private collections.

Statement

Shan Shui: Landscapes Revisited is a series of evocative, abstract mountain- and cloudscapes, organic and layered, reminiscent of Chinese shan shui landscapes. Placing emphasis on expression rather than representation, classical Chinese landscape paintings did not aim to show the realistic appearance of nature but instead to capture its essence and rhythm, revealing the artist’s inner landscape. In this series I search for expression by exploring the boundaries of photographic process, delving into the photographic materials themselves. The photosensitive chemicals in instant film, exposed to ambient light and hand-extruded, are worked in stages over time, capturing movement and gesture and recording evidence of the artist’s hand, which ultimately finds expression in the collision of light, chemicals, film, and physical manipulation.