This work by Bence Bakonyi comes from a photographic series entirely devoted to the architectural landscape of the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Sensitive to the urban environment and living spaces, the photographer is interested in the many skyscrapers designed to accommodate millions of inhabitants. Often cold and impersonal in appearance, these great towers are now part of the metropolitan landscape in which the inhabitants must nonetheless manage to find their place. Bence Bakonyi, who experienced this himself during his studies in China, captures this architecture through the medium of photography in order to render them accessible and perceptible. In luminous, orderly spaces, he succeeds in revealing a bright and contemporary architectural aesthetic composed with lines of colours and spatial structures. His photographs have the ability to connect reality and imagination, and to divert our everyday gaze towards questions that are as noble and universal as human existence.

**The artist: Bence Bakonyi**

Born in 1991 in Budapest, Bence Bakonyi studied photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, so named in honour of the famous Hungarian Constructivist artist. In 2013, he undertook a yearlong university exchange in China, where he developed a major interest in architecture and urban space. Shanghai is the most densely populated city in China and one of the largest megalopolises in the world. It has undergone massive housing development with the construction of numerous skyscrapers and housing blocks. Fascinated by the extent of its monumentality, Bence Bakonyi dedicated a key series of urban photographs to the architecture, with the aim of revealing an essential element within the unknown. A simple and contemporary aesthetic thus arises from his compositions, highlighting the essence of almost stylised forms in the urban landscape.