Chen Nong, Phaintor
Firstly, an item which requires addressing: Phaintor (f-ai-nt-tor); is a new term I'm inventing here in my blog. It means an artist who embodies both a painter, and a photographer.
It has been before 1860 since photographers have been fighting against painters for validation in their art making abilities. Today it seems that photographers have become a permanent fixture within the realm of Art with a capital A, and even esteemed colleagues to painters. The photo-realists are surely a result of this union between the two mediums, who are the children of the painters, who have finally accepted their mother and birthed them. I suppose that the digital arts, which I imagine to be the youngest of the children of those photo-painter parents, whom can actually paint and collage photo's, and paintings, seamlessly combining them in order to create a more realistic illusion. Imagine that. And Chen Nong is among the second born. He is a photographer who hand paints his photographs. His method is to stage black and white photographs and hand paint dying pigment onto the photographic surface. Not a practice unknown to traditional photographers. However, it is a technique that is not a readily found artistic method among renowned traditional photographers. I am referring to the transparent paints and pens that photographers have used in the past to repair the damage of technical imperfections, such as; dust and scratches, which are among other defects of the materials. I think that the proof of the convincing display of an art form is a result of it's tools. Nong's own traditional approach is achieved by a flaunting of his materials, his tools. His work is as much a painting, as it is a photograph and he demonstrates that in a convincing way. There is interesting composition and texture as well as uncontrollable circumstances which have been directed in the way of Chen Nongs mastery which leads him to the production of incredible creations. Nong's images are poetic and jarring, tragic and comedic, and the schizophrenic screams of cowering ghost.
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