SONCX1 - NEW BOOK Song Hongyu artist: CHANG XING TIANXIA. (Unimpeded Travels around the World). 暢行天下。宋洪宇 創刻. Qing'an, 2020. Title page, introductory pages in Chinese and English plus 100 original b/w prints. 27x20 cm. Loose in portfolio case. GBP 2,500.00 The print artist, Song Hongyu, from China's Heilongjiang province, here demonstrates the strength of the creative impulse in times of adversity - namely the strict and ongoing Covid lockdown in China from early 2020 onwards. Undaunted by the cancellation of artistic projects involving travel abroad to England and Italy, the artist utilized Google maps to visualize his travels and rigourously created 165 black-and-white prints showing intimate street scenes, views and sights in Italy and England. From these he selected 100 to compile this portfolio. All very well executed. Size of actual printed area of each print is 12x15 cm. The views include Rome, Milan, Venice, small towns in the Italian Alps and northern Italy plus numerous scenes of London - the Thames, the City of London, St Paul's, small streets etc. Due, it seems, to the unavailability of regular materials at the time, the blocks from which the prints were done are made of a hard acrylic plastic that gives a very good and sharp impression. Song also made numerous cutting tools specifically for this project. The prints are numbered consecutively 21-120 and are also uniformly numbered in an edition of 60 copies. (The edition of prints 1-20 were sold commercially before the artist conceived this project). Introductory page of text in English, otherwise Chinese text only. Images and further details available on request. Subjects: Printing Item 18 in List 210. URL for this record: hanshan.com/?s/SONCX1.HTM Record produced by Hanshan Tang Books, www.hanshan.com. |