Sun Yanchu's Heavy Snow at Asia Now

Sun Yanchu's 2018-19 work Heavy Snow, a unique Developer Painting on photographic paper, was fictively purchased by Laurent Perez for artpress at Asia Now fair in Paris. The Chinese photographer, born 1978 and based in Zhengzhou, creates experimental pieces by painting with developer in a darkroom before printing as black-and-white silver gelatin photographs. His motifs reference classical Chinese painting—tigers, mountains, pines, bamboo—but the smooth, glossy photographic finish imparts an eerie otherness. Heavy Snow evokes Brassaï's graffiti, with granular accidents revealing hasty mountain strokes in a snowstorm, capturing a tension between painting and photography. Sun, self-taught, has exhibited at Three Shadows Art Centre in Beijing (2015) and the 3rd Jimei x Arles festival (2017). The work was shown at M97 Gallery's stand at Asia Now, 9 avenue Hoche, Paris, October 16-20, 2019.