Jiayi Gu

Jiayi Gu is a landscape and urban photographer who has exhibited in the United Kingdom and China. Recent exhibitions in London include Espacio Gallery, Youth Mobile Photography, Exhibition, Filet, University of the Arts, and Grays Wharf Gallery. Her biography described her work as “working through image, material, and the spatial experience of perception, Gu investigates how time and attention shape the way we see. Her photographic and spatial works share a contemplative sensibility, creating spaces where stillness, change, and memory coexist in delicate balance”.

The photography of Jiayi Gu is largely documentative in nature and typically reveals environments through an angle of the environment, such as light flares of the sun blocking the composition or rain drops pressed against a window as she takes photographs of skyscrapers. There is often a geometric formula to her compositions which reveal angularity and distortion based on cropped composition and non-central angles. Through the mist of rain and deep penetration of sunlight, these landscapes and cityscapes descend upon the surface of the photograph as if being experienced in a heightened state of mindfulness. 

Surfaces are studied upon, such as the yellow paint lines on asphalt or the delicate fibers on linen hanging on a windowsill. There remains a glass-like effect in the photography, whether in captured in reflections, lens flares of sunlight, or the crystallization of rain drops on the surface of various objects. Some of the photographs seem more cynical and depict pieces of plastic trash on benches and even on the beach, as if to understand the destructive nature in disregarding ecology and conservation by others. But even in these cynical pieces there remains a beauty in the composed plastic being reflected upon raindrops and moisture of water. Moisture seems to be a consistent theme within the photographs, either through rain or misty fog, the landscapes and cityscapes become accentuated with aquatic elements. 

V. 30 (pictured above) depicts a frozen shoreline slowly melting away in the sunlight. The crystalized land and water reflects diamond-like reflections which the piercing sunlight overtakes the composition and horizon. This deeply poetic piece reveals inclination on contemplating surfaces and texture. 

With a knack for visual communication and dynamic photography, Jiayi Gu advances the purpose of documentary photography through her clever use of moisture and found objects amidst the urban and natural landscapes of her environments. These sociological planes reveal contemplative aesthetics rather than direct narratives, revealing solace in surface and minimalistic tendencies based in wabi-sabi philosophy. The imperfections and subtlety of light and form are what drives the purpose of these vibrant photographs.