SZE TSUNG NICOLÁS LEONG — Shoshana Wayne Gallery

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SZE TSUNG NICOLÁS LEONG

WORLD VIEWS: HORIZONS AND LOOKOUT TOWERS

NOVEMBER 20th, 2020 - FEBRUARY 28th, 2021

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of over 30 photographs by the Los Angeles-based British-Mexican-American artist Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong, selected by the artist from his ongoing and iconic series Horizons, as well as a new image series Lookout Towers. Shown at a time when confinements and lockdowns have increasingly constricted us into looking near, these two series explore the opposite: the act of looking far. The exhibition opens online November 20 and runs through January. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

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Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong’s artistic practice focuses, he has previously written, “on how we see, understand, and belong to the world.” His Horizons, begun in 2001, are a series of photographs taken throughout the globe of the line of sight separating ground from sky, and at the same time, on a more cognitive level, they are “an exploration of the horizon as the limit of what we can see and know, that questions the boundaries separating the present from the past, near from far, familiar from foreign.”

Mr Leong’s Horizons presented in this exhibition again reiterate his exploration of the range of environments within which our lives and histories unfold, and highlight, in addition, connections between abstraction and landscape, the picture plane almost dissolving into vast fields of color. Among the works on display here are horizons taken this year at Playa del Rey in Los Angeles, capturing the turquoise light generated by bioluminescent algae found in the ocean—the algae absorbs light during the day and gives off a bright glow at night.

Lookout Towers is a new series of black and white photographs of a building type particular to the Hoiping and Toisan regions of Canton, which emerged in the 16th century and reached an apogee of construction volume during the early 20th century. While these lookout towers served a defensive purpose against bandits and often functioned to represent social standing (whether of a family or a village), as a genre they are built expressions of diaspora—enabling, both literally and metaphorically, the act of looking out to distant horizons, and embodying the changing nature of living in and belonging to the broader world. Funded by remittances from communities in cities as dispersed as Mexicali, Lima, Caracas, San Francisco, Liverpool, Johannesburg, Kolkata, and Singapore, the towers symbolize an emerging form of global identity and cross-cultural melding that challenges ingrained assumptions about fixed borders and identities.

Much like the contemporaneous Beaux Arts movement, these towers mined historical architectural styles to create new forms from an eclectic mixture of influences—from Greek and Roman columns, to medieval turrets, to Fung Seoi geomancy, to Spanish arches, to Han dynasty watchtowers, to classical Han script and iconography. Growing internationalism, aided by migration, cultural exchange and integration, education abroad, the rise of the World Fairs, along with the increased distribution of books, postcards and magazines, all influenced and encouraged this stylistic diversity. For Leong, Lookout Towers is also a personal exploration into ancestry, as his grandfather emigrated from Toisan to England during the First World War and sent money back to construct such buildings.

Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong was born in Mexico City, where he spent his childhood as well as in London and Los Angeles, and has lived and worked in those cities as well as in New York, Rome, Houston, and Beijing. His visual practice has, over the past two decades, focused on creating new pictures of the world, whether by assembling together a new landscape that uncovers unexpected relationships, as in his series Horizons; by revealing how a society can be reshaped through the erasure of its history, as in his series History Images; or by surveying the newly unfamiliar terrains of a political map discolored by isolationism and nationalism, as in his series Atlas. His work has been exhibited internationally; reviewed, published, and written about extensively; and is included in numerous museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, the National Gallery of Canada, the Getty Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in Visual Arts from the American Academy in Rome. His books include History Images (Steidl, 2005), Horizons (Hatje Cantz, 2014), and the forthcoming Paris, Novembre (Steidl).

HORIZONS
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LOOKOUT TOWERS
LOOKOUT TOWERS
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HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Salin-de-Giraud, Camargue, France

Salar de Uyuni V

Philippine Sea

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Salin-de-Giraud, Camargue, France, 2017

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Salar de Uyuni V, 2010

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Philippine Sea, 2010

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Playa del Rey II, California

Playa del Rey I, California

Playa del Rey III, California

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Playa del Rey II, California, 2020

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Playa del Rey I, California, 2020

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Playa del Rey III, California, 2020

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Lisan Peninsula, Jordan Rift Valley

Smásandur, Iceland

Suruga Bay, Japan

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Lisan Peninsula, Jordan Rift Valley, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Smásandur, Iceland, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Suruga Bay, Japan, 2008

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Skeiðarársandur II, Iceland

Indian Ocean

Baie du Mont St Michel II

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Skeiðarársandur II, Iceland, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Indian Ocean, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Baie du Mont St Michel II, 2009

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Reynisdrangar, Iceland

Al-Jizah (Giza) II

Presidential Park, Astana, Kazakhstan

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Reynisdrangar, Iceland, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Al-Jizah (Giza) II, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Presidential Park, Astana, Kazakhstan, 2007

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Lake Michigan

Mont Saint-Michel I

Isla Incahuasi, Bolivia

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Lake Michigan, 2012

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Mont Saint-Michel I, 2009

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Isla Incahuasi, Bolivia, 2010

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Quartier Latin, Paris

Roma

La Habana Vieja II

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Quartier Latin, Paris, 2008

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Roma, 2018

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

La Habana Vieja II, 2010

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

L to R:

Pont Alexandre III, Paris

Huaqiaocheng, Nanshan District, Shenzhen

Parque Europa, Torrejon de Ardoz, Madrid

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Pont Alexandre III, Paris, 2017

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Huaqiaocheng, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, 2008

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

HORIZONS

HORIZONS

Parque Europa, Torrejon de Ardoz, Madrid, 2018

Archival pigment print

12” x 22” (30.5 x 56 cm): Edition of 10 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

24” x 44” (61 x 112 cm): Edition of 5 + 2 Artist’s Proofs

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Gei Lou, Fuk Wo Leui, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Jan Sai Lau, Chong Sai Chyun, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Jit On Lau, Hing Man Chyun, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

On Hing Lau, Jung Sing Chyun, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

On Wa Lau, Tong Mei Leui, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Sau Tin Lau, Hing Man Chyun, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Siu Hin Lau, Jeui Tau Leui, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

LOOKOUT TOWERS

LOOKOUT TOWERS

Yyun Seui Ting, Daai Wu Tong Chyun, Hoiping, 2018

Gelatin silver print

22 ½” x 18” (57.2 x 45.7 cm): Edition of 6 + 2AP

67 ½” x 54” (171.5 x 137 cm): Edition of 3 + 2AP

 
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