Ma Liang, aka Maleonn, is best known for his utterly original tableau vivant photography, impossible scenes full of absurdity, humour and heart. In his latest exhibition, he abandons the surrealism of the present in order to reconnect with past truths.

A girl opens a book facedown and black goldfish fall out, skidding and flipping on the concrete. A naked god takes off his welder’s mask to suckle from inflated rubber glove udders. An adventurer looks into the crater of a volcano that spills candy hearts.

These are the sorts of tableau vivant ('living picture') images Ma Liang has been making since he began his career as an artist five years ago. “I wanted to talk about myself,” he says. “What are my feelings about my life?” The answer he came up with is that “this time we live in is not very serious. This is the realism of my life. Surrealism is the realism of our time.”

In his exhibition at Bund 18 Gallery this month, however, Ma stops talking to himself and rummages through the past in search of something more real. “This will be my only important exhibition this year,” he says.

“Usually I use photography as the medium. This time I collected a lot of photographs from antique markets,” Ma says. He gathered over a thousand black and white I.D. photos taken up to 50 years ago. He also collected old papers, tickets, love letters, fapiao, and other personal items that have been long separated from their owners.

Using these materials, Ma has constructed three components to the show: video work, an installation of the I.D. photos, which will build up over the course of the exhibition, and a series of photos that more obviously connect with the theatrical scenes in his previous work.

For this third section, Ma shot carefully arranged portraits of the I.D. photos. Some have their faces concealed behind white jelly beans. Others are surrounded by piles of fish bones or feathers. All are shot in enamel surgical trays, which serve as a kind of stage. Ma chose the surgical trays because “although it has contact with pain, blood, and the heart, it looks very white.” Old photos and personal items might fade to white too, but on close inspection they’re just as connected to the vitality and emotion of the past.

The exhibition is called ‘White on White’, which both describes the works’ colour palette and alludes to a book by Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade. In a poem called ‘Where to?’ de Andrade asks, “Since the primal vulva, man has been but a road. Where to? That’s what we don’t know. But is it worth asking?”

Ma seems to think so, but not before asking ‘Where from?’ By looking closely at lives lived in China’s graver past, he takes a shot at bestowing some seriousness on the present.

‘White on White’ at Bund 18 Gallery, 18 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, near Nanjing Dong Lu. 11 March – 22 April. Tel: 6326 8099 x 3001

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