Michael Wolf | Gallery Feature
Michael Wolf | Feature Exhibition
May 11 - 31, 2023
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto | Upper Gallery
This May, Bau-Xi Gallery is honoured to present a curated selection of works from the renowned series, Tokyo Compression and Cheung Chau Sunrises, by the acclaimed German photographer, Michael Wolf.
In Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf decided to push the issues of privacy and voyeurism that he first explored while documenting dense megacities to their extreme. The density presented here is not architectural but human, as commuters fill every available square inch of these subway cars. Wolf applies the “no exit” photographic style to these portraits, trapping the gaze of the viewer within the frame by aiming his camera at passengers pressed against the windows of a crammed Tokyo subway.
With the 2019 series, Cheung Chau Sunrises, Wolf left the city of Hong Kong, finding a new home on the nearby island of Cheung Chau. On the roof of this three-story house, with views of one of Hong Kong’s many bays, the series grew conceptually. These photographs appear as a systematic counterpoint, at a place synonymous with a lack of space, smog, and a permanent conformity to economic circumstance. This meditative body of work was the last one created by the award winning artist.