SPECTATOR Photography by Fang Tong

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Fang Tong

Eighteen large-scale photographs from three series: Soap Opera, The Chen Family, and Window will be presented to the audience along with editions of various sizes at the newly established Vancouver Lipont Art Centre. Besides the photographs, the set of Lonely Christmas - Soap Opera Series will be re-created in the gallery.

Fang Tong adopts a spectator’s perspective to look at the lives around her and uses a cinematic style in her photography. Her works are embedded with an implied narrative, which is left to the viewer to resolve over time with their own imaginations. Reflecting the artist’s background in classical art, the production process is carefully planned to control the frames and the expressions of details, which gives her work an ethos of a painter. As a bystander, Fang Tong captures the potentials that photography can embody the work with an eternal quality, thereby creating a slightly fictional world that resembles reality but transcends consciousness. Fang Tong’s passion is to put her work at the border of the surreal, yet hold back enough to keep it firmly in the real world.

Audiences may see versions of themselves in the Soap Opera, The Chen Family, and Windows Series. Multicultural British Columbia creates opportunities for us to ponder different cultures, lifestyles, adventures and the future. Along with the carefully processed details, her photos provoke audiences to create a narrative out of cinematic pictures. There may not be a clearly defined story behind the scene, but there is a strong mood and atmosphere throughout the whole image. The imaginary world is strangely familiar while the narrative arc takes audiences on a hyper-visual ride through people's sub-consciousness. She nurtures the balance between the real and the surreal that pulls her audiences into the world she created, but she also allows the audience to discover their own answers.

Fang Tong

Fang Tong is an artist based in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She graduated from the Fine Arts Institute of Shanghai University and has studied in France. She has had a successful career in painting, sculpture, design and in other media. In recent years, she has been focusing on photography and has won several major international photography awards. Her works are published in Cana-dian and international magazines such as VOGUE. Her Swimming Pool won first prize in the Nikon International Photography Competition Category C in 2015. She was commissioned by Sony Corporation in 2013 as one of the twenty photographers around the world to represent Sony’s camera phone.

Vancouver Lipont Art Centre

Vancouver Lipont Art Centre (www.lipont.com) is a commercial art space established in 2016. Situated in the building of Lipont Place™ in Richmond, B.C., it advocates the integration of business, art, design and culture. Guided by the idea of “Internet plus” and supported by YKLM™’s online business platforms, it brings new vigour and vitality to the Vancouver art scene.