The El Otro, El Mismo portrait series uses imagery of twins, rebirth, solitude, time, circus, and play to explore existentialist themes. PH21 Gallery has gradually become the series’ primary collector, acquiring two works per year. This year, I was finally able to experience the exhibition in person in Budapest.
Everything we cast into time eventually softens and loosens. Turning photographs into collectible objects each year, and placing them within new curatorial contexts, gives them a kind of structured reinforcement — this process holds a special meaning for me.
The theme of this exhibition is “The Color of Meaning”: “The chromatic qualities of photographs are not just technical inevitabilities, but essential, expressive, and formative elements of photographic meaning.”
I just received the news that the photobook collecting this series has entered the printing phase. It will be available both online and in physical bookstores.
I hope to continue “photographing what I don’t want to paint, and painting what I cannot photograph” (as Man Ray once said).
June 24, 2025
“Significant Color” Exhibtion, PH21 Photography Gallery, June 2025
Installation In Progress, May 2025
PH21 Gallery, June 2025.
***El Otro, El Mismo系列人像借双生、重生、孤独、时间、马戏、游戏等意象讨论存在主义话题，*PH21摄影画廊以每年两张的速度逐渐成为这个系列最主要的藏家，今年终于得以来布达佩斯亲历展览现场。我们向时间里投的一切都会软化，变得松弛。每年把照片变成可收集的物件，并置于策展人提出的新脉络中，让它们受到某种结构化的加固，对我来说有别样意义。这次展览的主题是“意义的色彩”: “照片的彩色属性不仅是技术上的必然，更是其摄影意义中不可或缺、具有塑造性和表现力的核心要素”。刚收到消息辑录了这个系列的摄影书也已进入印刷程序，之后会在线上和实体书店发售。希望自己能继续“拍我不希望画的，画我不能拍的” (Man Ray语）下去。- 二零二五年六月二十四日
Exhibited Work: El Otro, El Mismo.
Budapest, Hungary, June 2025
A curated international photography exhibition at PH21 Photography Gallery
May 31– June 24, 2025
Curators’ words:
There are two kinds of photographs with respect to the significance of their use of colours. On the one hand, ever since colour film technology became widely available, colour has become the default in most photographic practices. That is, some photographs are in colour not because their colours bear some special significance (compared, for instance, to their possible black and white counterparts) but simply because the available film or digital technology has long made colour the common method of capturing photographic images. We may think of these photographs as colour by default. On the other hand, colours are often central to the meaning of photographs for their emphatic, symbolic, psychological, social, compositional, etc. significance. These photographs would not work in black and white the same way, or they would not work at all. That they are in colour is not merely a technological given; rather, it is an integral, formative, and significant aspect of their photographic meaning. We may think of these photographs as colour by significance.
Artist Statement (Brief Version):
This diptych uses color as an essential language for conveying existential states. In In The Lonely Hour, the desaturated tones and digital painting evoke a disembodied stillness, where identity dissolves into shadow—color here mirrors emotional detachment. In contrast, Rebirth immerses the viewer in a saturated red, symbolizing blood, womb, and mythic transformation. The intensity of this red is not incidental—it is the medium through which rebirth becomes visceral, uncanny, and gender-subversive. Together, the works hinge on color as psychological and symbolic force: not default, but deeply significant.