Crowned
An architecture of ever more elaborate facades and tech-enabled structure is keenly worn like jewellery by our cities. Once limited to a few leading world cities, spectacle architecture has jumped and accelerated all around the world as global capitalism has taken hold. In the last few decades, the new cities of the Middle East and the remodelled cities of China have been scrambling for extravagant architecture to put themselves on the map. Through an intense play with colour, form and composition my photographs tease out the delirium, complexity and beauty of this high pitch urbanism. These buildings brashly represent the large systems that act on us - economy, politics, imagination and myth - and are therefore a constant fascination to me, a constant puzzle to grapple with and try to get a hold on. A brazen power-play is etched in their elaborate surfaces and dramatic forms, giving an increasing sense of folly to such extravagant buildings all packed together flexing their muscles. It gives an impression of instability and a slippery relationship with reality. Realism is very much left behind, which chimes with the global corporate culture they represent. Like true follies these buildings and business districts are now of course sitting mostly empty all around the world due to the Corona pandemic.
