No More No Less

Collaboration with Kensuke Koike
Date: 2016

In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. The album comprises original negatives, silver prints, manuscript comments from an anonymous professor, and shows the student’s diligence in mastering the rules applying to the conventional portrait. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography.

The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.

2015年，法国艺术家苏文（Thomas Sauvin）淘了本上海大学摄影系某位学生于上世纪80年代初制作的相册。这本相册包括原始底片、银盐感光照片、佚名教授的评论手稿，能从中看出这位学生在学习传统人像摄影技巧时付出的勤奋和努力。这本相册藉由居住在威尼斯的日本艺术家小池健辅（Kensuke Koike）的专业之手重获新生，小池的实践结合了拼贴摄影和拾得摄影。

《不多不少》系列源自小池和苏文的相遇。从苏文收藏的原始底片相册里洗出来的照片，被小池以敏锐的想像力，使用简单的小刀和胶带解构并重塑。然而，这些纯粹的手工介入都遵守着一条规则：不删除任何内容，不添加任何内容，即“不多，不少”。在这般融合了自由与约束的语境中，小池和苏文细致地探索仅由自身构成的图像的可能性。