The Spiral of Spectacle: The Image Bank of Wang Guofeng | Installing & Walkthrough  | Canton-sardine
Channel: Canton-sardine
Date: 2023-04-20

As a significant study in communication, the “spiral of silence” coined by German communication scholar Noelle Löhmann in 1974 is a brilliant analysis of the ‘silent masses’ phenomenon under Nazi Germany. Curator Yang Xiaoyan finds this theory also locates perfectly in Wang Guofeng‘s North Korea series.

From the spectator’s point of view, Wang’s North Korea series can be seen as a decoding process, as the objects are undifferentiated and individualities are obliterated, except the special one in performance. This decoding process is as in-depth as a spiral. The spectacle in view is itself silent. A silence spiral out and is encoded as an undifferentiated whole. The image practice of Wang Guofeng is a double spiral process, using his precise grain to decode the subject in spectatorship repeatedly. And he must do so in such a way that the object encoded in a totalitarian manner can then be ‘automatically’ rendered. The Spiral of Spectacle is a manifestation of the representation of the silent ant-like masses, which becomes an undifferentiated sign of presence.

Wang Guofeng states, “I have always avoided being confined by the notion of photography within my practice but emphasizing the “image as a medium”. Many Wang’s serial works are computer generated. The camera is only used to capture contents for his image bank, and subsequent computer editing is needed to finalize the body of work. Although Wang’s image appears to be a documentary, what lies behind it is a manipulation of the spectacle, which implicitly points to the nature of the subject in view.


This exhibition is part of the 2023 Capture Photography Festival Selected Exhibitions Program.