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Un/natural Photographs by Stephen King and Ming Thein

Exhibition details

Opening / Event Date:
5 December, 2015
Time:
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Closing / End Date:
16 January, 2016
Event Category:

Artists will be present at the opening

Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to present the gallery’s first photography exhibition “Un/natural”, a joint show featuring works by Ming Thein and Stephen King. This curated selection of works examines the tension and similarity between natural and unnatural elements. In seeking to demarcate the line between nature and what we create from nature, the photographers’ works blur these distinctions and signs. As the Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure demonstrated, the signifier or form the sign (or image) takes influences what the signified or concept is, and this relationship reciprocal. Thus, though the subjects of King’s photographs are found in nature, they appear seemingly too regular or uniform to be considered natural, suggesting that what is natural isn’t always represented within our system of language and imagining. Only once we go looking for signs, organic clues, within the photographs do we then realise that perhaps this is nature, because humans lack the necessary capabilities to produce such works. Ming Thein’s work is then a complete contrast to King’s, his photographs of man-made subjects are irregular enough to be plausibly organic, but as with King, a number of visual cues (such as text or machined edges) imply that what you are looking at cannot possibly be natural. We see “nature” as a sign or image represented by a multitude of objects and symbols, a tree for example, yet these simplistic conceptualizations are invalidated by these photographs. Both sets of images have simultaneous elements of harmony and dissonance: in King’s case, it’s the asymmetry that contrasts the calming tones. In Ming Thein’s images, it’s the intensity of colour that both creates and dominates the overall structure of the image. There is a very strong element of abstraction to both – this is deliberate, to almost completely eliminate any sense of scale. It is a reflection of the fractal nature of both natural and man-made worlds. In fact, the cognitive boundary is blurred enough that is almost possible for the subjects to be from the same origin.

About Stephen King

Stephen has had a long career in finance and investing, having been involved in banking, private equity and hedge funds ever since graduating from Harvard College in 1988.  Today, Stephen is still very much involved in managing his own hedge fund and family office.  However, he has also begun developing a parallel career around another passion of his – fine art photography. While Stephen began shooting again mainly for his own enjoyment and artistic fulfillment, his images captured attention on various photo and social media sites and he began to field ever increasing requests for prints of his work, which he started selling in large fine art form for private collections, offices and public display areas.  Getty images also contacted him about licensing after seeing his images on Flickr. Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to host his first ever exhibition.

About Ming Thein

Ming Thein is a fine art and commercial photographer based out of Kuala Lumpur with an international client base focused on presenting the beauty of objects and producing a faithful record of life. He is a theoretical physicist by training, graduating from Oxford at 16 and spending nearly ten years in the finance and strategy sectors before realising that photography and creating something were a pathological necessity for him, not just a hobby. When not photographing for clients, he is currently working on the long term Idea of Man and Forest projects and consulting for industry hardware partners. His works from been exhibited in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Chicago. He is also a Getty Member, with photographers in Getty Images’ library.

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