Gong Co.
Gong Co. is a monumental memento mori about the disappearance of a family-run grocery store in the American South. In 2003, Christian Patterson discovered this Mississippi shop, appearing as a unwitting time capsule filled with expired products. The photographer spent twenty years documenting the slow deterioration of this shop, which was closed in 2013 and stripped in 2019. Alternating between on-the-spot and studio shots, trompe-l’oeil collages and handwritten notes, Patterson meticulously recreates every last detail of the shop. Awarded the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2015/2016, Gong Co. took shape as a book-object and becomes both a testament to a bygone era, an outdated representation of twentieth century America, and a personal testimony to impermanence.
Gong Co.
For the impressive installation Gong Co., Christian Patterson used the former Grand Café des Mouettes as the location for his recreation of a Mississippi grocery store gone bankrupt. Having managed to retrieve the furniture and stock of the failed business, the artist physically reproduced the original setting with hundreds of leftover items and goods expired for decades. By re-appropriating a creative process typical of pop art, the American photographer, recipient of the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2015/2016, addresses capitalist society and its deep transformations. According to Patterson, photography is not only a way of representing reality: It becomes part of a narrative in which the emotional power of images confronts the physical presence of objects.
Gong Co.
For the impressive installation Gong Co., Christian Patterson used the former Grand Café des Mouettes as the location for his recreation of a Mississippi grocery store gone bankrupt. Having managed to retrieve the furniture and stock of the failed business, the artist physically reproduced the original setting with hundreds of leftover items and goods expired for decades. By re-appropriating a creative process typical of pop art, the American photographer, recipient of the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2015/2016, addresses capitalist society and its deep transformations. According to Patterson, photography is not only a way of representing reality: It becomes part of a narrative in which the emotional power of images confronts the physical presence of objects.