AOYAMA

223@Akio Nagasawa Gallery Aoyama

Lin Zhipeng (林志鹏) aka No.223

6/21 - 7/27/2019
OPENING RECEPTION | June 20, 6:30PM - 8:00PM
GALLERY HOURS | Thu.–Sat. 11:00–13:00, 14:00–19:00
CLOSED | Sun–Wed., National Holidays

Akio Nagasawa Gallery Aoyama is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of works by the Chinese photographer Lin Zhipeng, aka No.223. Lin Zhipeng was born in 1979 in Guangdong, China, and currently lives and works in Beijing as a photographer and freelance writer.

Having been publishing photographs and short texts on his own blog since 2003, Lin began to focus more seriously on photography in 2004. Assuming at once the position of editor-in-chief and publisher of his own independent magazine, and frequently working in the realm of fashion photography, Lin’s activities have a significant influence on young Chinese.
Lin continues to photograph – mainly with a film camera – close friends and other people around him, to create portraits of the daily life and culture of young people in present-day China. The resulting snapshots sometimes look erotic, but that’s not really the artist’s intention behind capturing such scenes. For him, sex is an essential part of young people’s everyday life, on the same level as eating and sleeping for example.
Being from China, a country with strict regulations regarding expressions of sexual matters, Lin Zhipeng does not operate under his real name, but chose to use the alias “No.223.” He doesn’t seem to find it difficult to continue to work, probably because even though public displays of nude photographs are prohibited in his country, in the Beijing art scene people seem much more relaxed and rather open to depictions of nudity.

In recent years, Lin has been exhibiting his works mainly in Belgium, Paris, Berlin, and other places in Europe. This exhibition is his first solo show in Japan and it displays about 70 prints, ranging from his early works to more recent ones. Please also don’t miss the opportunity to secure your signed copy of his photo book Flowers and Fruits (T&M Projects), which will be on sale at the venue.

Artist

Lin Zhipeng (林志鹏) aka No.223

リン・チーペン(林志鹏)aka No.223

Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223) born in Guangdong in 1979, Lin Zhipeng is a photographer and freelance writer based in Beijing. Created in 2003, his blog “North Latitude 23” where he published everyday pictures accompanied by short texts received million views and made him famous among the web community. Presented for ten years in group exhibitions in China and abroad, Lin’s works have also been the object of several solo shows both nationally and internationally (Walther Collection Ulm; De Sarthe Gallery Beijing; Stieglitz19 Gallery Antwerp; M97 Gallery Shanghai; Delaware Contemporary Museum, etc). He has published photography books in Taiwan, France, Canada and Japan.
Lin is a leading figure of new Chinese photography emerging in the last decade, popularizing his work originally via social media and other online platforms as well as his self-published zines. Lin’s work has come to reflect and define a certain zeitgeist of the post-80’s and 90’s generation of non-mainstream Chinese youth. Amidst an otherwise conservative and often closed traditional society and cultural background, Lin’s photographs act as a collective not-so-private diary of a young generation wishing to escape the pressures from a high-stakes society and play within its limits. Faded flowers tangled with flesh tones, myriad patterns mixing with an emotional ambiguity of both love and chaos, fantasy and eroticism. 223’s works are saturated with a soft sense of carefreeness, a playful innocence, and a certain optimism amidst a hedonist lifestyle going against the expected pleasures and entrapments of the middleclass dream.
Naming himself “No.223” after the police character in Wong Kar-Wai’s movie Chungking Express, Lin also adopts a sense of the Hong Kong director’s poetic and dreamy atmosphere as well as the loneliness and mystery of many of his film’s characters. Lin Zhipeng offers his point of view on an alternative youth spirit and culture in an often conservatively Chinese cultural context. His spontaneous photographs portray a young generation who indulge in love and life, oscillating between jubilation and deep melancholy, playful sexuality and often just the simple human need to be loved in an otherwise indifferent and ever-changing society.

Publication

Flowers and Fruits

$31.97
Sold Out

Sour Strawberries

$217.99
Sold Out

Limited edition of 600 copies with a Signed C-Print inside the book.