Learning To Surf

January 2024 - March 2024

Rossi & Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong SAR

Transformed or distorted during the development process, Matthew Brandt’s images expand upon photography’s limits. His oeuvre of process-heavy works will be on view at Rossi & Rossi from 27 January through 9 March 2024 in Learning to Surf, the American artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia. The presentation also showcases a new series of prints on glass titled Swell (2023), substantiated after his September 2023 visit to Hong Kong.

Brandt (b. 1982) photographs subjects that exist through their materiality. For instance, in Lakes and Reservoirs (2011–13), the bodies of water he captured on camera were the same ones in which the resulting C-prints were bathed. The artist had no control over how the emulsion layers would react to the collected lake water, only how long the photographic papers were soaked. Hence, each unique result is erratic in its faithfulness to the original image. Even so, Brandt retains an element of field research in photography as he merges the subject into the developing process. His visits to lakes and reservoirs in the Western United States are accordingly bound together in both image and substance.

Landscapes, trees, forests and woods recur in Brandt’s photography. Nature faces degradation, just as images corrode in extreme saturation in Lakes and Reservoirs. With Silver (2019), the artist expands the network of the relationships in his photography by placing the viewer within the image.

By manipulating images of spaces that were lived in or communal, Brandt also documents human traces. To create Swell, the artist took photos of dilapidated ‘dead malls’ in Hong Kong, documenting their state of limbo due to low foot traffic. Bound in metal wire that references navigation stick charts, the images are heat-fused onto glass, which bloats in shapes sculpted by the wires during the process. Having spent portions of his childhood in Hong Kong in the 1980s, Brandt leverages these malls to signify a point in time for the shifting urban landscape and to evoke his experience of navigating the city by means of his memory.

Subject and material intertwine in Brandt’s practice, and his fixation on methods of developing and printing images equates his photography to the process of object-making. In this way, his subjects comprise both the pictorial element and the photographic process, clustering tactile layers of reality both seen and experienced.

為了延展媒介的界限，Matthew Brandt總會在顯 影和成像工序之下使影像變得扭曲模糊。Rossi & Rossi榮幸舉辦他在亞洲的首個個展《Learning to Surf》，在2024年1月27日至3月9日期間展出他經過 大量暗房實驗的攝影作品，當中包括他在去年九月 訪港過後製成的玻璃印相系列《Swell》。

Brandt的攝影題材不單再現在視覺上，同時亦依存 於影像的物質性上。創作於2011至2013年的《Lakes and Reservoirs》系列利用他所拍攝的湖水去浸泡 C-print，催化藝術家本人不能控制的結果。他無法 預測感光相紙上的乳劑對湖水的反應，只能決定 C-print被浸泡的時間，因此每張照片對它們的原始 影像都有不一樣的還原度。Brandt走訪這些四散美 國西部的湖泊和水庫，將拍攝的主體摻入沖洗的工 序中，影像與物質融為一體，保留了攝影中實地勘察 的經歷。

Brandt的實驗性攝影實踐也促使他透過物質載入歷 史脈絡。2019至2021年創作的《Uranium》如其名稱 所示，在照片的沖洗過程中使用到鈾。系列拍下了面 臨水位上升威脅的馬紹爾群島的珊瑚礁，而該地區 也深受1946至58年間美國數十次核試驗的輻射遺 禍影響。鈾因其放射性而被廣泛使用，而Brandt也利 用這種化學元素去指向馬紹爾群島和其人民所遭受 的災難。

Brandt選擇透過處理老舊生活空間的影像去紀錄人 類的痕跡。《Swell》拍攝了香港的一些死寂商場(俗 稱「死場」)，它們人流稀疏，裏頭的許多商舖都未被 租用，時間有如停滯了一般。影像被熱熔在玻璃上， 玻璃被鐵線如同馬紹爾群島棒圖的導航線條一般綑 著，使玻璃在加熱時不規則地膨脹。Brandt在八十年 代的香港渡過了部份的童年，這些商場除了象徵著 城市景觀一路變化中的某個時間點，同時也標誌着 藝術家憑著記憶在城市中往來的體驗。

風景、樹木、森林、樹林在Matthew Brandt的攝影 中反覆出現。大自然面臨環境退化，而《Lakes and Reservoirs》中的斑斕影像也受到腐蝕。《Silver》系列

(2019年)把拍下高聳樹林的銀鹽相紙裝錶在鋁版 上，再以銀溶液處理，斑駁的表面有如古董鏡子般反 射出觀眾。透過將觀眾納入影像，Brandt擴展了攝影 中的關係網絡，而觀眾也發現自己進入了圖像與主 體之間的對話。當觀眾與他們所置身的環境均成為 作品的主體，藝術家在愛德懷森林所感受到的自省