POWER OF INSPIRATION
“River landscapes on the Rhine and Yangtze“ and
“Moving landscapes – from Düsseldorf to Chongqing”
„Z-Space“, Shancheng Alley, Chongqing, China
October 1st to 30th, 2024
Photo series “River landscapes on the Rhine and Yangtze”
The Rhine is a symbol of Germany’s cultural and economic wealth, it forms a cultural area and represents a philosophical point of reference for the self-image of the people in the region in and around Düsseldorf and beyond. The Yangtze is one of China’s lifelines and symbolizes Chinese culture. The “Long River”, Chang Jiang, as it is also called in Chinese, plays a major role in people’s self-image, as it divides the country into North and South China. Numerous myths accompany its course and important events in Chinese history are linked to it.
Bernard Langerock has explored both rivers artistically. His photographs of the Yangtze river landscapes were taken in 2014 and 2019, and those of the Rhine river landscapes in 2020 and 2021.They are presented here as a juxtaposition of 32 large-format prints in black and white. The photographs appear calm and majestic, breathing the spirit of their time. The views of the shores mediate between documentary aspirations and a romantic view, not least due to the haze that gently hides structures in the distance. They partly document past situations, the growth of the cities has continued, the riverside regions in Chongqing were exposed to several flood disasters in recent years. The dialogue between the pairs of photographs reveals commonalities and differences. Against the backdrop of global ecological and economical challenges, it takes on a further dimension and pleads for an understanding between societies and cultures.
Photo series “Moving landscapes – from Düsseldorf to Chongqing”
The 10 photographs shown here are part of the extensive series of works entitled “Moving Landscapes” and symbolically depict the journey from Düsseldorf to Chongqing by train. However, they are not travel or landscape photographs in the true sense of the word, but rather convey impressions of the emotions felt by the artist during the train journeys. The traveler and his perception, the speed at which the train moves through space and the landscapes it passes through are related to each other and create an atmosphere of blurriness and indeterminacy.
The photographs are atmospheric images that reveal themselves subjectively to the viewer and, despite their abstraction, allow conclusions to be drawn about where they were taken by turning the illusionary space into an atmospheric space. Objects are not simply there, but are themselves in motion, emerging, receding, moving away. The contourless space is a space without beginning or end, photographed through a train window, it is now depicted on a surface. Bernard Langerock thus finds a conceptual way of dealing with appearance and disappearance and visualising the subjectively perceived atmospheres during the journey.
About Bernard Langerock and his China projects
The Düsseldorf photographer Bernard Langerock travelled to China for the first time in 2012: Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and Beijing.
He visited the country regularly in the following years:
Spring 2013 province Guangxi with Guilin and Lijiang
Winter 2013/14 Chongqing as an artist in residence; Beijing
Autumn 2014 Chengdu and province Tibet
Summer 2015 Chongqing, Shanghai and province Xinjiang
Summer 2016 Xiamen, Shanghai and Beijing
Summer 2018 Qingdao, Xi’an, Chongqing, Shanghai and Hangzhou
Autumn 2018 province Yunnan
Autumn 2019 Shanghai, Wenzhou and Chongqing
The Yangtze photographs shown in the exhibition were taken in Chongqing in 2014 and 2019. The series ‘Moving Landscapes’ was created between 2013 and 2019.
A selection of its photographs was shown in 2021 in the exhibition ‘River Landscapes’ at the Kunstarchiv Kaiserswerth, Düsseldorf, together with works by Bernd & Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Axel Hütte. In 2023, the solo exhibition ‘Power of Inspiration’ with the pairs of the river landscapes of Rhine and Yangtze was shown at Galerie Park-Kultur, Düsseldorf.
A total of 25 photographic series document Bernard Langerock’s work in China. They have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Germany, China, Belgium and Poland (see list of exhibitions).
Translated by using DeepL.com (free version)