MYTH/HISTORY II | SHANGHAI GALAXY

Artist: Maurizio CATTELAN

Work: Felix

Size: 183x610x792cm

Material: Oil on polyvinyl, resin, fibre-glass

2001

Born in Padua, Italy, the self-taught Maurizio Cattelan has created several remarkable works. His past experience as a chef, gardener, nurse, carpenter even as a caretaker of the dead bodies in the mortuary has certain influence on him for his artistic creation. Cattelan has a strong sense of humor and self-reflection that ranges from pop culture to history and even religious organization, His works seems to be very bold and rude, but yet he is at his most serious when he is most irreverent.

In the work Felix, Cattelan has transformed a household cat into an ominously gargantuan figure standing over 8 meters tall. The work is inspired by the cartoon character Felix the Cat and a full-scale Tyrannosaurus rex fossil display at the city's Field Museum of Natural History. Naming the skeleton after the cartoon character Felix the Cat, Cattelan jokingly undermines historical fact with fiction. With its back arched and tail in an alert position as if confronting a predator, it could be a frightening sight, resulting in a familiar and strange impression to the audience.

Artist: SHI Yong

Work: Gravitation - Shanghai Night Sky

Size: 239x556x50cm

Material: Light Box Installation, Metal frame, translucent acrylic film, acrylic board, 91 fluorescent tubes, 56 light boxes

Time: 2004

Shanghai based artist Shi Yong began making experimental installation works in the early 90’s. This period of works used the sensitivity of light sensory equipment to comment on the changes of time and space in his surroundings. He later began create video works, observing people’s psychological reactions by bringing a camera into daily life settings. In 1997, Shi Yong travelled to the United States to take part in an artist in residency program, after which the focus of his artwork shifted to focus on the platform of exchange between international and local.

Since 2000, the works by SHI Yong have been primarily focusing on "illusion and reality". In Gravitation - Shanghai Night Sky, the illusion of reality is captured by the artist via a set of photos showing skyscrapers in Shanghai set against night sky. Set on an expansive scale, the images appear diffusive and illusionary. These constructions are displayed solely with their tops, differing tremendously from the magnificent and overwhelming impression people usually have of modern buildings. The buildings look as if they were somehow attracted to the bottom of picture frame by a bizarre force. They appear almost as obscure as phantasm.

At the same time, light tubes in every single box are intentionally numbered and arranged so that they speak double fictions of desire and illusion. In contemplation of Shanghai, a city designated as paragon of encouraging overseas investment during economic reform, Gravitation - Shanghai Night Sky questions mega buildings and their significance, as they have been unboundedly intensified. Deep into the ideal and anticipation germinating from urban development, reality and illusion perhaps belong to a same body.

Artist: SUN Yuan & PENG Yu

Work: Freedom

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Sheet metal, high pressure water pum, water hose, tap

Time: 2009

Working with precision in their method of display, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu lure the viewers towards the themes of inhabitability, absence and presence, and liberation – where the static and the vigorous, the visible and the hidden are interconnected in a single network of visual cross-references. Foregrounded in this project is the duo's daringly innovative tests and construction of circuitous protocols and engineering procedures, all achieved through a high degree of labor intensiveness so as to orchestrate a single elegant experiential work that simultaneously directs attention and deflects interpretations thus smuggling in neglected core behaviors, calculations and narratives.

Rust is formed daily on the metal walls by the water vapors. The rendering of an evolving nature that happens within this exhibition also engenders imageries that are metaphors of a socially subversive agenda; an ever-changing painting of a bound infrastructure marked by a controlled yet unpredictable motion, much like today's complex socio-political conditions. The inhabitation of Sun Yuan & Peng Yu's presentation has also been strongly structured, with restricted views to enhance the overall experience.

Artist: ZHANG Ding

Work: Game with Unclear Direction

Size: 1000x800x300cm

Material: Old pine, old floors, vases, water, chairs, carpets, taihu stone, pebbles, foam, snow powder, plastic bags

Time: 2009

Old pine, old floors, vases, water, chairs, carpets, taihu stone, pebbles, foam, snow powder, plastic bags

It isn’t merely a scene but also an experience of ‘observing’ and ‘being observed’. It constitutes a mysterious playground where time and space repeat themselves in a cycle as does the water of the fountain or as symbolized on the carpet. Viewers are invited to create their own dreams and stories: in this background designed by the artist, they are the improvised actors of an unclear play.

Artist: GRÖNLUND-NISUNEN

Work: Flux of Matter

Size: 400x30x60cm

Material: Steel balls, aluminum, Dendro light ,layered wooden panel, painted MDF-board, actuator, battery, electronics

Time: 2012

Finnish artist duo Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen have been working together since 1994. They create sculptural and kinetic installations and interventions in urban and natural environments by using technology, sound and light as the primary material in their works. They address issues of space and physical phenomena through the sophisticated installations that often play with physical laws of nature.

The work on display is in slow, constant back and forth motion. When the last steel balls reach the lower end, the direction of the movement changes after just a short break. The steel balls rolling on the aluminum surface cause a constant sound, which is an essential part of the meditative artwork.

Artist: LIU Jianhua

Work: Regular·Fragile

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Porcelain

Time: 2002-2003

Regular·Fragile is an installation of everyday, readymade objects such as hats, shoes, toys and books reproduced made from white porcelain. These seemingly mundane objects are filled with a visual power, compressing personal memory with cultural meaning. They are at once familiar, but the transfer of medium creates a sense of abstract meaning.

As the artist states: “The feature of porcelain is that it has a hard surface, but is very fragile. By bringing this feature into the creations, it seems to imply that the many methods and illusions of reality cannot last. People always live in a state of unknown outcomes and illusory mindsets.”

Artist: Yutaka SONE

Work: Tropical Composition/ Banana Tree

Size: 236.2x287x299.7cm

Material: Rattan, metal armature and paint

Time: 2008-2010

Sone’s synthetic trees intensify the dialogue between natural and artificial structures. Made from rattan woven around a metal armature, the trees are meticulously crafted; leaves and stems have been carefully painted with acrylic paint and even include naturally occurring flaws in their pigmentation. From a distance, they look like their living counterparts. Individually as well as collectively, they appear like self-contained environments.

Artist: HU Jieming

Work: 100 Years in 1 Minute

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Multi-channel animation, installation

Time: 2010

Hu Jieming (b.1957, Shanghai) is one of the pioneers of contemporary digital media art and video installations in China. The concept of ‘time’ plays an important role in his works during the past several decades.

As he describes: “100 Years in One Minute is a video and sound installation consists of 1,440 storage bags arranged in the form of a matrix screen. 10 high definition projectors are used to project 1,100 videos onto the bottoms of these storage bags. The video images are excerpted from a wide spectrum of the archive of international art.

The audio sources for the work consist of two kinds. The first is for broadcasting, including human sounds (languages), produced sounds and natural sounds. The second source comes from live transmission. All these sounds are broadcast via 120 independent speakers hung from the ceiling.”

Artist: Harold ANCART

Work: Bow, Ark and Buk

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: 52 boxes (24 books per box, 164pages full four-color process, sewn hardcover, gilding on top edge), wallpaper, bucket, smart phone

Time: 2014

Bow, Ark, and Buk constitute the three integral parts of this work.

Bow is a large wallpaper that carries the image of a paradisiacal landscape that is set on fire. Borrowing the basic vocabulary of leisure and travel, this image promotes the utopia of a potential paradise, and support the idea that one has to dream if one intends to stay alive.

Ark is a large sculpture made of 1,248 books stacked inside 52 cardboard boxes, labeled with their content. The books in the boxes are exact copies of an abandoned book found by the artist in a hallway of his studio building in Brooklyn in 2010 which contains black and white images and text that focus on all the animals sheltered in the zoological garden of Prague.

Buk is a plastic bucket holding a smart phone that plays “The Ultimate Very Best of Elvis” on a loop. This anticipative sculpture witnesses a fictional lifestyle improvement for homeless people in the future. No longer subject to cold, for they will all carry electronic warming systems incorporated into their jackets, the homeless people will reunite and party around Buk rather than metallic trash cans set on fire.

Artist: ZHANG Huan

Work: Know the Destiny

Size: 800x690x730cm

Material: Cowskin, steel, wood and polystyrene foam

Time: 2013

Know the Destiny is a giant sculpture wrapped in the hide of over 100 cows. Cows are familiar to the artist from his childhood. He has witnessed how calves are born, grow in size and then shipped from his hometown to the slaughterhouse in Shanghai to be processed into bones, meat and leather. Within the sculpture, the cowhide represents the cycle of life.

The simple and direct material only resonates with the artist’s experience growing up in his rural town, while also giving the sculpture a beastly appearance.

The slouched and weary posture of this beast and man is compassionate, yet powerless. As the artist states: “Within each person’s heart, there is a giant who they hope to become. But this requires a huge cost, perhaps to be cut and bruised all over and weary to the extent you need a guide to help communicate.”

Artist: Anselm KIEFER

Work: Les Reines de France

Size: 280x700cm

Material: Emulsion, acrylic, oil, glass and lead on canvas

Time: 2004

Anselm Kiefer is regarded as the most important contemporary artist in Germany and is a renowned representative of German New Impressionism. During the 1970s, Kiefer studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher. His works have become distinctive through the incorporation of materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. In Kiefer’s work, one often finds signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures, or places particularly pregnant with history.

Influenced by literature, his sculpture and painting works often include references to historical female figures. Les Reines de France (The Queen of France) is not simply a portrait, but an investigation into history. The artist has used the Queen of France to represent the personal experience of change each era. Therefore, the work does not have any concrete portrait within the frames, all of these act as encoded signals through which Kiefer seeks to process the past. As a result, his work has become linked with a style known as “New Symbolism.”

Artist: Pannaphan YODMANEE

Work: Prophesy

Size: 380x1300cm

Material: Mixed media on cement board and rock

Time: 2015

The crisis that existed and occurred in this world is the truth of natural phenomena. The uncontrollable changing of everything has causes fear, pressure and sorrow leading human kind to rely their faith on religion. Some people refuse to accept the truth and their present conditions. Through science, they have tried very hard to conquer nature and succeeded in making their society prosper through developing forward and discover that there is a bigger universe than the earth we live on.

The belief of “Buddhist Trai Bhum” – that things turn out the way they do because nothing is permanent, has leads my imagination and art creation with regards to the crisis of time, loss, devastation and end finally. For my work, I would like to express them with natural raw materials and new materials to artistic expression of the diverse contemporary art and Thai traditional art.

Artist: SHEN Fan

Work: Landscape-9210

Size: Dimensions variable

Time: 2012

Landscape-9210 is a series of installation presenting the landscape through three perspective—points, lines and faces. In a way, Shen’s landscape is not merely the nature scenery.

Since 2011, the artist has started to collect the index statistics of each day, each week, each month and each year during the past 19 years, from 1992 (when Shanghai Stock Exchange introduced the composite index mode) to 2010. He used them as a basis for his creation of the landscape series.

The landscape in his work epitomizes the spiritual landscape that is controlled and distorted by the material life.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Gallery 1 through 3

Time: 1978－1988

Gallery 1 through 3 is a presentation of Shanghai artist Zhang Jianjun’s work from 1978 – 1988.

Zhang Jianjun graduated from the Shanghai Theatre Academy Oil Painting Department in 1978. Like many young artist of the time, Zhang Jianjun was influenced modernist painting and deeply interested in by Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Expressionist painting styles. In 1978, Zhang Jianjun organized and took part in the “Wild Roses Exhibition” held at the Shanghai Art Academy where he exhibited the work Still Life with Banana. The painting combined together oil paint and rice paper. The use of brilliant and strong colors and free and easy brushstrokes earned Zhang Jianjun the moniker “Fauvist Zhang”.

A 1979 creative trip to Yongle Palace, the Longmen Grottoes and the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang marked a turning point in his artistic creations. He shifted from the conceptual methods of Western oil painting towards an exploration of Chinese traditional culture. The works he created beginning in 1980 embodied his unique artistic approach to understanding Daoist philosophy, calligraphy and various forms of ancient Chinese scripts.

In the spring of 1980, Zhang Jianjun attempted to incorporate natural materials such as sand and stone directly into the artwork. These creative experiments by using mixed media laid the foundation for his abstract artworks Noumenon (Existence), which spans virtually all of his artistic creations through the 1980s. In 1985, “water” became a major topic of research of the artist and he created the works such as the Nature Series and Misty Rain Series.

In 1989, Zhang Jianjun moved to the United States and became a visiting professor at New York University. The twenty years in the United States has not changed the humanistic and historic character of his work. This exhibition of over twenty works by the artist in his hometown of Shanghai primarily brings together early works by the artist. Compared with his more recent works known throughout the world, this series of works is able to tell more about the artist’s changes and developments.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Pathetique

Size: 140 x 105cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 1979

Zhang Jianjun’s painting Pathetique responds to Tchaikovsky’s masterpieces, in which a kind of depressed and yet powerful passion that played upon viewers’ heart strings. The painting was simply a composition of several choppy black strokes, which seem to burst out from nowhere and with a clash of metal objects.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Girl in the Shade Under the Tree

Size: 165 x 138cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 1980

Zhang Jianjun also painted pieces with a romantic and melancholy tone, reflecting the taste of an academic artist, popular in his art school, especially with faculty members. A Girl in the Shade of a Tree is an example of this style. With a softly fragrant tone, the painting renders a slender and shy girl, clad in white silk T-shirt with laces and red bell-bottom pants (the fashion of the time) standing under the shade of tree, in a seemingly subtropical place. It evokes a daydream-like atmosphere recalling a mysterious Shangri-La. The still life on the table-flower in a vase and a glass- add another Romantic sentiment to the composition.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Dunhuang Series

Time: Material: Oil on rice paper

Dunhuang Series, oil on rice paper paintings created during the trip to Longmen Grottoes and Dunhuang Grottoes and the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang in 1979，includes 8 paintings in this hall. These paintings are, in a sense, variants of Dunhuang frescoes. What is unique of the fresco of the Six Dynasties period is that after many centuries, the brilliant color of the paints with metal elements, especially iron, became dark or even black, which made the frescoes particularly expressive. Zhang Jianjun applied oil paint on rice paper to life sketch these frescoes, not only studying the Dunhuang images and the way of coloring, but also trying to integrate these ancient religious paintings with modern art.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Human Beings with Their Clock #2

Size: 235 x 816cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 1987

The most conspicuous effort Zhang Jianjun made to inquire into the issue of time was his figurative piece, Human Beings and Their Clock. People of different races, ages and periods, dressed or naked, were place in a surreal space. They either face upward, or look forward, while some simply close their eyes. They seem to be questioning the existence of man, temporality and all kinds of unknown existences, and where the desire of exploration and perplexed mindset coexist. A mystic oval sphere with Roman numerals, III, V, VII, and IX, rise from the horizon symbolizing correspondence and discrepancy of the clock of human beings and the timepiece of the universe.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Noumenon (Existence) Series

Material: Mixed media

From the year of 1983, Zhang Jianjun created his Noumenon Series. The Chinese Character 有（Noumenon）means “have”, “possess”, “exist” and “being”. By 1990, this series had a total of over 70 paintings. The artist combined natural materials such as sand and stone, with ink, scroll paper and oil paint directly in the painting. Zhang Jian-Jun’s work entered a period of solitude. Created in 1984, Noumenon (Existence) No. 55 was the first from the Noumenon (Existence) Series to incorporate ink-painting elements. Within the combination of rice paper and sand, ink played a sedative role, giving the surface an effect like the surface of some celestial body, with a hard texture of rock. In the work, Noumenon (Existence) No. 70, the artist originally intended to have a real rock, but realized the outer appearance of the rock against the surface of the painting appeared too barren. Therefore, Zhang Jianjun used rice paper to wrap the stone. The artist also used this as an experimental method to convey his metaphysics and other abstract ideas.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Nature Series

Size: 175 x 288cm

Material: Chinese ink, rice paper

Time: 1987

In Nature Series, while dark ink washes occupy the top area, a large empty area on bottom right leaves space for “breath”, and provides “air”, or “qi” in Chinese, with space of movement. The effect of diffusion and proliferation of ink appears isologous with the primeval status of the universe, seemingly the reconstruction of chaos on visual effect.

Artist: ZHANG Jianjun

Work: Misty Rain Series

Material: Chinese ink, rice paper, oil on canvas

Time: 1988

Zhang Jianjun returns again and again to ink and to water, finding diverse ways to feature the latter in his art. It is the subject of paintings, from the Misty Rain Series of the later 1980s, to the ongoing Water Series begun in 2011.In Misty Rain, the oil paint is laid over the ink, combining to create a harmonious scene of one of the old water towns near Shanghai.

Artist: LIANG Shaoji

In 1988, Liang Shaoji started working with silkworms, breeding them and using them in his works. From that moment on, a whole new oeuvre emerged, in which the artist sought to combine biology, bio-ecology, weaving and sculpture, installation and action. Generally, these works are entitled Nature Series, followed by a number and a date. He refers to them as sculptures made of time, life and nature, as "recordings of the fourth dimension".

This exhibition features two works from this series. One is the installation Chain: The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the other is the three-channel video Stele.

Together, the works form a series of cyclical steles, steles of life and steles of history.

Artist: LIANG Shaoji

Work: Nature Series No.79-Chain: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Polyurethane colophony, iron powder, silk, cocoons

Time: 2003

Chain: The Unbearable Lightness of Being was inspired by a silkworm precariously suspended by a thin silk thread. The extreme tenacity and perseverance of life in suspension touched off my imagination, and so I had these little lives spin thread around a rusty chain ring and suspended it in the air like life itself, presenting the continuing contention between life and death, rigidity and softness, lightness and heaviness, coldness and warmth, confinement and resistance. The interlocked units of the artwork are a structural allusion to the “figure eight” movements of spinning silkworms and the pictographic representation of the word silk in Chinese (丝). The materials of the artwork are rich in contrast and tension.

Artist: LIANG Shaoji

Work: Stele

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Three-channel HD video10’ 6 ’’

Time: 2008-2014

This artwork was begun in 2008 and completed in 2014 after five years of repeated adjustments.

In gazing at the shadows of history, history is like silk thread, continuous and unbroken; history is like thin ribbons of cloud, flowing and floating across the sky. The slowly quivering clusters of silkworms, sometimes coalescing, sometimes diffusing, leave infinitely shifting traces like the lines of calligraphy. Ancient writing about the silkworm is scattered across the land, carved into stones and tattooed onto the skin. Such writing, when realized through the quivering movements of living silkworms, is richly expressive. The myriad forms of the silkworm, sometimes stretching their heads forward, sometimes struggling to twist and crawl, sometimes frightened by precarious footing, become historical allegories, histories of heroism, greatness, suffering and chaos. As the threads gradually accumulate until little light can penetrate, the writing of the silkworms disappears, making for a wordless stele. The rustling sounds in the film (which include the artist’s breath), present the artist’s insights into the passage of time and life. This is a video created with living beings as its medium. The emptiness within, as well as the stillness and illusions that emerge from this emptiness, generate the feel of seeping ink in painting, revealing the mystery and uncertainty of history.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

Work: Big Pipe

Size: 300x1100cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 2015

Painting has traditionally been about applying layers of paint. In Zhang Enli’s painting, he takes the opposite approach with very thin layers of paint, sometimes even revealing the canvas below as if almost being incomplete. The squared preparation grid within the painting remains exposed without disrupting the aesthetic of the painting. Instead, it becomes part of the visual element, organically becoming part of the image and enriching the painting structure by strengthening the dialogue between completion and process.

The “line” has been one of the main directions of Zhang Enli’s artistic experiments over the past three to four years. Here the hoses, cables and wire fences that proliferate in everyday life have become the subject of the artist’s depiction, and these concrete objects, once compressed, come to life on the canvas as abstract notions of the “line.”

The lines of this period are full of randomness and continuity. The flow of the brush is connected in some ways to the expressions of the line in ancient Chinese painting, full of calligraphic connotations, but also not consciously expressing Chinese signs. The lines emerging from these light, thin brushstrokes are curved or straight, bent or folded, sometimes entangled and sometimes extended, and form flexible relationships of correspondence through shifting containing themes. Big Pipe is a new creation from 2015. In this work, a connected “line” stretching across an eleven meter canvas breaks the boundaries of space.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

This exhibition comprises two segments, the first consisting of a series of early works. With autobiographical works, the artist set out from himself to express himself and the people around him. The artist captured ordinary moments from life with a unique perspective, one which influenced his examination and depiction of still objects in his later works.

The works in the second segment present Zhang Enli’s more recent experiments on the theme of lines, in which he presents details from life in a more random approach. The language of “lines” is concealed within specific objects. At first glance, the pipes, wires and other objects become carriers for the “line,” expressing an instantaneous tone that reveals the tension behind the objects. From the fading of the human form to the depiction of still objects, Zhang’s works in recent years have increasingly focused on the exploration of psychology and the perceptions of the viewing process.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

Work: Hanging Wire

Size: 200x210cm

Material: Hanging Wire

Time: 2011

Straight and curved lines are the main elements of Zhang Enli’s paintings. Although seemingly simple elements of lines and blocks of color, the artist has a unique ability to bring the form of his subject matter. Zhang Enli is able to create change through sometimes heavy and sometimes thin brush strokes, and despite their horizontal and vertical lines, the composition is harmonized and well structured.

From the fading of the human form to the depiction of still objects, Zhang’s works in recent years have increasingly focused on the exploration of psychology and the perceptions of the viewing process.

Zhang Enli’s more recent experiments on the theme of lines, in which he presents details from life in a more random approach. The language of “lines” is concealed within specific objects. At first glance, the pipes, wires and other objects become carriers for the “line,” expressing an instantaneous tone that reveals the tension behind the objects.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

Work: Peeled Mosaic (3)

Size: 150x150cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 2011

In the work Peeled Mosaic(3) the mosaic tiles are continually changing colors and posses the remnants of usage, as if naturally weathered, corroded and even peeling away. Zhang Enli used straight lines and diamond shapes to create a structure. The colors give the work an ethereal and fluctuating feel, making visible the passage of time. Behind what at first looks like a simple pattern and color palette is a detailed and leisurely lyricism filled imbued with continuously change.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

Work: Old Man and Bird

Size: 160x100cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 1994

In Zhang Enli’s works from the early 1990s, we often see images of rural figures in various corners of the city. His paintings would often fix people in the midst of movement, and yet we can still perceive the passage and continuation of time.

The subjects seem completely unconcerned with the “voyeuristic” gaze from outside the frame. Rich color, thick blocks of paint and fierce brushwork convey the bits and pieces of these ordinary lives, mixed with somewhat crazed and dejected emotions. Zhang Enli calls this his “Black Period” ,which precedes his more widely known “Container Period” by a decade.

The 1994 painting Old Man and Bird was created before many of his famous works. Upon its completion, it was immediately collected by a Japanese collector. It was later purchased by Mr. Budi Tek and returned to China.

Artist: ZHANG Enli

Work: Smoking Men

Size: 184x135cm

Material: Oil on canvas

Time: 2002

After his “Black Period” , Zhang Enli’s works entered into an important transitional phase, that of the self portrait. This obscure thread lurks between his “Black Period” and his “Container Period” and has, as of yet, attracted little attention. During this period, the artist mainly depicted himself and the living conditions around him. Unlike the thick stacking of black and red color blocks that marks his earlier work, these works feature lighter and thinner brushwork akin to watercolor painting, and employ lighter colors such as blue and white.

The three smoking figures in Smoking Men are all re-envisioned versions of the artist himself. These “selves” appear in the same space as signs and act in similar, yet somewhat differing ways. Their actions were common in society at that time. The “self” has been diluted into a part of the masses, just one more component of the multitudes.

Artist: LI Hui

Work: Cage

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Installation with green lasers and fog machine

Time: 2006-2014

Talented at using metal, plexi-glass, LED lights, lasers and fog machines to create artworks, Li Hui’s practice has two major strands: The first uses lasers, LED lights as material to investigate the new possible forms of expression by combing art and technology. The other strand is comment upon the rapid development of contemporary Chinese society through conceptual and spatial installations. Li Hui’s work incorporates both rational and expressive elements to present ideas about ideas about reincarnation and life and death. Through technology he investigates fundamental human emotional needs and psychological states such as fear.

Artist Li Hui uses laser beams to sculpt spaces for people to inhabit while evoking otherworldly dimensions and extraordinary experiences. In Cage, Li uses green lasers to create two virtual cages which appear alternately. The effect of these immaterial beams of light is to create an impression of something solidly material, which in turn triggers instinctive responses of disorientation and even anxiety in viewers, who find themselves “trapped” one moment, and standing outside the object of their imprisonment the next. While this work relies on visual and spatial perception for its initial sensorial and psychological impact, it suggests at a philosophical level the imaginary boundaries that people determine for themselves, which are wholly reliant on perception rather than reality.

Room 6

Space and materials: recent works by Yang Zhengzhong, Shi Qing, and Yu Ji

Space and materials: recent works by Yang Zhengzhong, Shi Qing, and Yu Ji

This space presents recent works of the past 3-4years by three Shanghai based artists: Yang Zhengzhong, Shi Qing, and Yu Ji. The works are focus on how the artists experiment with materials and the creation of space within their individual practices. The concept for painting installation Passage Series by Yang Zhengzhong comes from a video installation of the same name. The work uses perspective to simulate the winding and twisting swerves of the video onto wood or steel plate, exploring the perception of space and its psychological appropriations.

Wuhan Climate and Factory of Climate Negotiations is an art project by Shi Qing engaging with an actual geographic space. Using everyday materials such as plaster, wood and cardboard, he disrupts the order of time and space, breaking up disrupting conventional expectations and habit. Setting out from the perspective of space, Shi Qing ignites the imagination and viewing method.

Trained as a sculptor, Yu Ji obsessively uses minimalist materials such as concrete, iron, and wood to shape a from between space and time. Her works explore the relationship between body and nature, and search for a relationship between materials which may not have any relationship before.

Artist: YANG Zhenzhong

Work: Passage Series

Material: Oil on Wood

“Speaking about his Passage Series, Yang Zhenzhong said: “I am interested in the basic form of a passage. A passage is limitless in perspective space, giving you the feeling of infinite depth. A passage is a void space running from on content to the next, there is not even a process. I believe all these passages are all artificially constructed spaces, and I wanted to change them, which is the same as changing the basic form of a passage.”

Each painting alone can be understood as illustrating the flowing and changing nature of urban life through images of tunnels and corridors that are often twisted, contorted and seemingly surreal.

Artist: SHI Qing

Work: Wuhan Climate

Size: Dimensions variable

Material: Square steel, wood, wheel, waterproof cloth

Time: 2014

Shi Qing has continuously been engaging with the idea of “climate”, which he understands as the relationship between geography and human actions. Different spaces and the people who inhabit the spaces merge into a “climate”.

Shi Qing attempts to put “climate” as a third party or unexpected conflicts introduced into his project, which is penetrated and internalized into the entire practice. The process of this project constantly emphasizes on the mechanism for action involving with an outsider and the tripartite partnership among action, living space and art producing. “Climate” in living environments is both rhetorical and practical.

Artist: YU Ji

Work: Flesh in Stone Series

Material: Cement, iron

A person’s body is the result of a variety of contests. Realistic sculptures are the focus of Yu Ji’s research as she investigates how the language of traditional sculpture and body can continue to develop today. In the Flesh and Stone Series, sculptures of dismembered bodies are shackled with a rough-hewn iron armature, inciting illusion and suspense towards life.

As a mass modern construction material, concrete is almost a symbol of times. These grey concrete and the pocked marked iron clamps give these sculptures a feeling of being trapped in the frightful speed of this era like buried forms within the splendor of this era.

Artist: SHI Qing

Work: Wuhan Climate

Material: Square steel, wood, wheel, waterproof cloth

Shi Qing has continuously been engaging with the idea of “climate”, which he understands as the relationship between geography and human actions. Different spaces and the people who inhabit the spaces merge into a “climate”.

Shi Qing attempts to put “climate” as a third party or unexpected conflicts introduced into his project, which is penetrated and internalized into the entire practice. The process of this project constantly emphasizes on the mechanism for action involving with an outsider and the tripartite partnership among action, living space and art producing. “Climate” in living environments is both rhetorical and practical.