Gong Co.

Recreating a closed-down family grocery store in Mississippi, Christian Patterson – Grand Prix Images Vevey 2016 –, questions consumerism, immigration and social change in capitalist societies.

Several years ago, I discovered an old Chinese grocery store in Mississippi that had unintentionally become a sort of museum. And strangely, its shelves remained filled with products that were decades old, not unlike a time capsule.

Christian Patterson, Gong Co., Mississippi, 2016

Over the past several years, I photographed the store and its contents, and it surroundings. Then, when the store closed, I acquired a substantial portion of its contents – its products, objects and fixtures, including its sign, front door, front counter and numerous other things – and transported them to my New York studio, where I am photographing and manipulating the material to form a publication and installation.

Photography is the heart of my practice, and a substantial part of my work is strange still lifes of the faded, old products that are arranged, lit and shot in several different ways – inside and outside the store, on-site in Mississippi, and in my studio. I am doing this with consideration for the products’ practical purposes and inherent visual qualities, and also with an interest in strange and unexpected aesthetic and visual effect.

The images will play with the conventions and techniques of product and still life photography; blend the slippery realms of documentary, commercial and artistic imagery; and explore the differences and overlap between the mass-produced consumer-cultural source material and my own creative work.

With this work, I am interested in mixing concept, factual and fictional narrative and different imaging forms, and treating this place and its contents as a sort of archive of material to be reconstructed and re-presented. My source material has a faded past but I am interested in more than mere nostalgia; I am interested in reactivating this place and its material in a contemporarily relevant, photographically adventurous and innovative way.